CHATS BY 



Him mil lllilt II] lllllj] Jlllll 




Book Yz/ 




PRESENTED BY 




X.^4 




CU\^ 



CHATS BY THE FIRESIDE 

A STUDY IN LIFE, ART AND LITERATURE 

BY 

THOMAS O'HAGAN, Ph. D. 

Author of "Studies in Poetry," "Canadian Essays," 
"Essays Literary, Critical and Historical," "In 
Dreamland," "Songs of the Settlement," etc. 




THE ROSARY PRESS, PUBLISHERS 
SOMERSET, OHIO 



01 <* 



Gift 
:hor 

i 



r 



DEDICATION 



To the Rev. Albert Reinhart, O. P., 
late editor of the Rosary Magazine and 
translator of Father DeninVs "Luther 
and Lutheranism ,, — wise Counsellor, 
sympathetic Critic and true Friend, 
I affectionately inscribe this volume. 
The Author. 



FOREWORD 



The "Chats" contained in this little volume 
have appeared during the past two years in the 
columns of the New World, of Chicago, and the 
Catholic Register, of Toronto, Ontario. They 
have been written in the few leisure moments 
that come to a busy editor whose journalistic 
duties shut out the heaven of dreams. The 
author would fain hope that these informal 
"Chats" may prove helpful and suggestive to 
teachers and students who manifest an interest 
in "Life, Art and Literature." 

Thomas O'Hagan. 

"The New World," Chicago, May 3d, 191 1. 



EDUCATION 



CERTAIN EDUCATIONAL 
DEFICIENCIES 



LET me here chat with my readers as to cer- 
tain defects that mark the educational 
systems of America. I say systems, for has not 
each province in Canada, and each State in the 
Union, an educational system peculiar to itself? 
There is one defect which marks the educational 
work in well-nigh every part of America, and 
that is lack of thoroughness, and this is largely 
due to the haste with which studies are taken 
up, pursued and completed. 

The desire to graduate and mingle in the 
affairs of life is so keen amongst us here in 
America that we are unwilling to undergo pa- 
tient preparation for the duties that fall to our 
hands in the various walks of life. We would 
fain assume the responsibility of life and share 
in its financial rewards long before we have 
served our intellectual apprenticeship, and so 
we often see our young men and women face 
the world and gird on their swords for its 
battles while they are yet raw recruits intel- 
lectually. Indeed, it is amazing what super- 
ficiality marks much of the so-called scholar- 
ship of our day. 

9 



Nor is it in the primary schools that this defi- 
ciency is most marked. It is found in the classic 
halls of our great universities. Men have gab- 
bled their way through the B. A., and even the 
Ph. D. courses, and have come out with unde- 
veloped minds, little culture and no power. 
They have simply been stuffed and spoon-fed 
and have done no thinking for themselves. 
They have a smattering of a great many things 
and nothing thorough. 

* * * 

I myself have heard professors lecture to 
graduate students in universities who lacked 
both true and sound scholarship, as well as the 
more important thing still — inspiration. Again 
the specialism of the last twenty years has 
played havoc with broad scholarship. Men 
have been studying the Roman Empire and 
Mediaeval France till they have forgotten how 
to spell or frame correctly in speech a logical 
sentence. Listen to these men lecture and 
what incorrect and slipshod English they use. 
They are so bent in pursuit of the historical fact 
that they pay no heed to the correct expression 
of thought, as if that, too, did not belong to 
scholarship. * * * 

No wonder that in such institutions of learn- 
ing as Wellesley College the faculty have de- 
manded of the girls that, in future, in order to 
graduate, they must be able to spell. The truth 

10 



is that in this country we are too fond of dis- 
play. All our goods are in the window and 
very little in the shop. We should aim more 
at true and solid scholarship and less at display. 

Why, for instance, should a young man be 
permitted to enter the medical profession until 
he has first received a liberal education? This 
country has passed out of the formative condi- 
tion and should now gird up its loins and be 
satisfied with only the highest ideals and 
supreme excellence in everything. Granted 
that we are still walled in by the material, should 
not our ideals overcome this and set before our 
lives such a high standard that neither medi- 
ocrity nor presumption can enter our scho- 
lastic gates? * * * 

The generosity of our people has builded 
libraries at our door, but how few are the seri- 
ous students amongst us. We skim the morn- 
ing and evening papers and, perhaps, read one 
of the "six best sellers, ,, but we never think of 
dipping into the tomes of wisdom that the 
genius of man has bequeathed us. So we live 
day by day on the chaff and chips of ephemeral 
scribbling. * * * 

How delightful, indeed, it is to meet with a 
lover of good books and the wisdom packed 
between their covers ! Such a one grows intel- 
lectually, ripens in the things of the mind and 

II 



becomes truly cultured. As Carlyle said, a 
library is a true university, but how few get the 
best out of that university! If they did we 
would forget to enquire what had been their 
courses in the schools. We have all poetry, we 
have all art, we have all history, which is a rec- 
ord of the activities of man; we have the wis- 
dom of the world's greatest thinkers, and yet 
we profit little by these princes of genius — in 
our blindness eating the husks strewn by the 
wayside, forgetful ever of the rich banquet so 
carefully prepared for us. 



12 



CATHOLIC AND SECULAR COL- 
LEGES CONTRASTED 



NOW that our colleges have begun work 
and our students are enrolled, it is well 
for us to take an inventory of the educational 
conditions of our day, for education in itself is 
one of the chief factors not only in the fashion- 
ing of our lives but in the promotion of our 
temporal and spiritual happiness. 

Indeed, we little dream how great a share 
education has in shaping the character of our 
civilization and creating for it ideals, towards 
which and in the attainment of which humanity 
strives and reaches and crowns its labors with 
achievement and success. 

* * * 

Catholic education and secular education are 
broadly differentiated in the fact that the former 
emphasizes the things of the soul, while the lat- 
ter emphasizes the things of the mind. In every 
land where the Catholic Church builds a school 
or a college, its first thought is the spiritual wel- 
fare of the student. In this it does not in the 
least minimize the importance of the intellect, 
but it rightfully places above all knowledge the 
knowledge of God. 

13 



So if you were to ask me what is the most 
striking difference in the character of the in- 
struction given to-day in the Catholic and non- 
Catholic College, I should say that in the Cath- 
olic College the student is taught to discrim- 
inate between truth and falsehood — he is not 
left at the mercy of error, with its alluring false 
lights, as is the student in the non-Catholic Col- 
lege, who can believe everything and anything 
and whose professor or instructor, wandering 
himself in the desert of thought, dare not tell his 
class "This is false and that is true." 
* * * 

In no department, therefore, is the non-Cath- 
olic College so weak as in the department of 
philosophy. Philosophy in its final analysis is 
correct thinking, but in non-Catholic Colleges, 
since there is no recognition of absolute truth, 
the best that is done in the courses in philos- 
ophy is simply a study of the various Systems 
or Schools of philosophy. It is evident, then, 
that a course in such colleges is of but little 
value to the young mind seeking for laws and 
principles of correct thinking, which later on 
may safely guide his footsteps through the 
mazes and perplexities of life's problems. 

When we turn to the department of letters or, 
if you will, humanities, we have much to be 

14 



thankful for also in our Catholic Colleges. Now 
all literature is but a reflection of life and indeed 
there is nothing in all art but what is in life. 
For what is art but life idealized, and the basis 
of all idealization is truth. 
* * * 
Since, then, literature is but a reflection of life 
we may naturally expect it to mirror also the 
errors and falsehoods of life. For instance, the 
poet builds a great poem, but based on false 
philosophy, as in the case, for instance,^ of 
Pope's "Essay on Man," or Tennyson's "In 
Memoriam," which simply reflect the philos- 
ophy of Bolingbroke and the mingling of doubt 
and' faith and pantheism of the philosophers of 
the first half of the nineteenth century, under 
whose influence the poet Tennyson fell. 
* * * 
All this, woven in the splendid and memory- 
clinging couplets of Pope or the divine music 
of Tennyson, is accepted by the non-Catholic 
professor and student without any protest— in- 
deed little heed is paid to the truth or falsehood 
of the teaching, the mind of professor and class 
being surrendered to the vital beauty and power 
of the poem. Of course it should be here 
stated that much of the informing thought of 
Tennyson's "In Memoriam" may, without re- 
serve, be also accepted by any Catholic. 

15 



I hold here that what is strongest, best, most 
enduring and absolutely essential in all great 
English poetry is Catholic, as indeed any life — 
spiritual life — there is to-day in non-Catholic 
Churches has its warmth because of its bor- 
rowed spiritual fire from the Catholic Altar. I 
need not here appeal to Catholic truths modified 
or believed in part by various Churches. 

-K 'k >k 

We Catholics have the full warmth of God's 
great spiritual Sun, while theirs are the bor- 
rowed or lesser rays that light up but little cor- 
ners. Hence it is that all art is ours — sculpture, 
architecture, painting, music. The saints, too, 
are ours, with whom we can commune. The 
Mother of God is of our household and we have 
ever a throne for her divine Son in our hearts 
and homes. 



16 



SOME EUROPEAN UNIVERSITIES 



H\ TALK about some universities of Europe 
A* may be of interest to my readers. They 
have grown through the centuries, and many of 
the oldest and most renowned owe their founda- 
tions to the munificence and patronage of the 
Popes of the Middle Ages, for the Catholic 
Church at all times has been an enlightened 
promoter of the arts and sciences and has 
freely and generously encouraged the advance- 
ment of learning among the people. 

The three most ancient universities in Europe 
are unquestionably Paris, Oxford and Bologna, 
and it is difficult to say just when they received 
their charters and recognition as veritable uni- 
versities. The French allege with much pride 
that it was a colony of scholars from Paris Uni- 
versity that established Oxford University. In- 
deed, these two great mediaeval universities be- 
gan their work almost contemporaneously, and 
their influence upon mediaeval life and culture 
cannot be overestimated. 

I have said that Paris, Oxford and Bologna 
were the first European universities, yet this is 

17 



not entirely correct, since the Arabs had two 
universities — one in Southern Italy, and the 
other in Spain — which antedate in foundation 
these three universities. Paris University was 
long famed for its courses in philosophy and 
theology, and Bologna for its courses in Roman 
law. In this respect Bologna was an important 
factor in bringing about the Italian Renais- 
sance, in the impetus which it gave to the study 
of the Latin tongue. I say Latin tongue be- 
cause in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries the Latin was really a living language, 
and in Italy held much the same place at the 
courts that French held at the court in England. 

* * * 

In estimating the number of students in at- 
tendance at the mediaeval universities, it is well 
to remember that there was no such stringent 
matriculation in vogue as there is to-day. In- 
deed, we know for a certainty that boys of 
twelve years of age swelled the student body at 
Oxford in the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- 
turies, when it is estimated that as many as 
twelve and fifteen thousand students attended 
lectures in this ancient seat of English learning. 

* * * 

A university of early foundation and, next to 
Paris, the oldest in France, is Montpelier, in 
Provence. This university has been noted for 
centuries for its medical school. A goodly num- 

18 



ber of men eminent in science and letters in 
France have been educated at this ancient seat 
of learning. It is, however, best known to-day 
for its courses in medicine. 

* * * 

There are in all sixteen universities in France, 
and of course Paris is the crown of all these, 
since nearly everything that is great in literature 
and art is centralized in the gay and beauteous 
French capital. I was going to say that the 
other fifteen universities don't count — at least 
not with great scholars. This, I think, is a pity. 
No one university in any country should pos- 
sess a monopoly of education — it should, rather, 
be freely distributed. 

* * * 

In Germany, for instance, Berlin University 
has no such monopoly. Heidelberg and Bonn 
and Munich have professors quite as eminent as 
those of Berlin, while Paris decoys away and 
holds all, or nearly all, the professors of national 
reputation in France. Of course, for the study 
of such a special subject as Celtic, the Univer- 
sity of Rennes, in the heart of Brittany, and the 
University of Poitiers stand preeminent. 

* * * 

Among the universities of Europe to-day dis- 
tinctly Catholic, Louvain, in Belgium, stands, I 
think, easily at their head. Indeed, Louvain is 
the strongest and best organized university — 

19 



Catholic or non-Catholic — that I have found in 
Europe. There is a thoroughness and solidity 
in it that I could not find anywhere else. It is 
a credit to Catholic scholarship, and deserves 
the support of the whole Catholic world. 



Another Catholic university doing splendid 
work, though its student body is not very large, 
is Fribourg, in Switzerland. It has a number 
of very distinguished professors, and there is a 
serious and solid character to all its work. It 
is here that the brilliant Dominican Father 
Mandonnet lectures on Church history. 

* * * 

But I must not forget to mention Innsbruck 
University, in the Tyrol, whose philosophical 
and theological departments are in the hands of 
that able body of educators, the Jesuits. Here 
it was that Dr. Pastor, the historian of the 
Popes, lectured for many years. While the 
medical school of the Innsbruck University 
is not as far-famed as that of Vienna, it 
has on its staff several professors eminent in 
their special departments. Mention should be 
also made here of the Catholic University of 
Lille, which has always stood high, especially 
in the department of French literature. 



20 



VOYAGING TO EUROPE 
AND TIPPING 



VOYAGING TO EUROPE 



LET me chat with my readers about voy- 
aging to Europe. For many years it 
had been my ambition to cross the ocean — to 
tempt the tempests of the deep. I must confess 
that I found it a very pleasant experience. Of 
course your pleasure will depend a good deal 
on the character of the ship's passengers. If 
they are social, genial, wellbred people you are 
likely in for a good time, but they may happen 
to be a dull, uncouth — I was going to say un- 
civilized crowd. 

I have had one experience a little strange in 
my different trips to Europe — the going there 
has always been pleasant, while usually the re- 
turning has been disagreeable. Not only have I 
always been caught in an ocean storm while 
returning, but the social side of the return trip 
has always disappointed me. Perhaps this is 
owing to the fact that every mind is in opti- 
mistic tension when voyaging to Europe be- 
cause of the expected pleasures ahead, while on 
the return trip a surfeit of sightseeing has 
cloyed the mind and rendered it not open to 
social pleasures. 

23 



One of the first things to occupy the mind 
in setting sail is the taking of an inventory or, 
if you will, making a catalogue of the passen- 
gers. Every one is anxious to know who is 
who. An hour or so and usually the catalogu- 
ing is done. A passenger boat going to Europe 
is quite a little world in itself — for usually 
nearly all classes of people are represented in it. 



You have the Englishman who, perhaps, has 
been seeking his fortune in the Canadian Klon- 
dike, returning with a good deal more wisdom 
and experience than gold. He stands monocled, 
gazing at the passengers as they go up the 
gangway. Yet there is about him a fine free- 
dom, which he gained under the aurora borealis 
of the great Northland and which he never 
would possess had he remained in England, 
for your typical Englishman is cold and insular. 

And just over there a step from us is a 
mother and two daughters — the daughters have 
finished their course at college and are seeking 
the culture that comes from travel. They ex- 
pect to visit all the art centers of Europe and 
get on good terms with Raphael and Turner 
and Murillo and Titian. Then the younger of 
the two girls will remain in Paris to pursue 
her studies in painting, for which she has a 
particular talent and taste. 

24 



Here at our elbow is an Exile of Erin — 
not exactly such a one as Thomas Campbell, 
the Scotch poet, met at Antwerp when he 
penned those touching lines so creditable to his 
sympathy and genius — but rather an exile of 
Erin who has prospered in the land of the 
Maple and who now, absent from his father- 
land for forty years, is returning to the cradle 
of his fathers beside the Shannon, with all its 
historic memories. ^ ^ ^ 

Then, of course, we have on board a type 
of the young lady who is going abroad bent on 
conquest. She has already catalogued all the 
"nice" young men on board and she very soon 
starts shooting her arrows. Usually her first 
catch, as she carelessly and recklessly throws 
her bait, is a university graduate, wearing a 
soft sophomore look and a pair of well-adjusted 
eye-glasses. Their accidental acquaintance is 
a kind of an overture to the whole varied per- 
formance that is to follow. Eight days of in- 
termittent friendship on the ocean and then 
even the mysterious deep knows all the secrets 
of the twain. 



25 



ON TIPPING 



JUST a word with my readers on the subject 
of "tipping" which obtains so largely in 
every country of Europe. The French call it 
"Pourboire" and the Germans "Trinkgeld." 
Every tourist from America who visits Europe 
very soon learns what it means, however for- 
eign may be the word to him. It has become 
a very nuisance in well nigh every country of 
the Old World and we are not without its 
annoyance in America, though it is not so much 
in evidence here. * * * 

I know nothing, I must confess, of its origin, 
but like all venerable customs I suppose it can 
be traced back to the time of the Caesars, and 
perhaps this is the original meaning of "Render 
unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's." It 
is not too much to say that "tipping" supports 
a whole army in Europe. It is a kind of a 
respectable way of begging — a degree higher 
than street corner mendicancy, but to the tour- 
ist a degree more annoying. 

* * * 

Of course "tipping" obtains in Great Britain 
and Ireland, but it has reached the subtlety of 

26 



a science in Italy and France. However, in 
such countries as Ireland and Italy it is sur- 
rounded with such tact and good nature on the 
part of the petitioner that you feel it almost 
a pleasure to give. There is a very charm in 
the manner in which an Irish guide can coax 
money out of you. He never lets you know 
what he is after — chloroforming your senses 
with the graciousness of his tongue and the 
sweet palaver of his compliments, till the first 
thing you know you have well nigh emptied 
your pockets into his. 

* * * 

The Italian does his work by a kind of 
strategy and, though you may have a suspicion 
that he is following the trail, you hate to draw 
him away from the scent of his game. Then 
of course he is a descendant of Marcus Tullius 
Cicero and Brutus and Romulus and Eneas, 
and you'd feel ashamed to ignore such an- 
cestors in the Italian guide of to-day, who is 
ever ready to point out to you all the re- 
mains of Roman glory. 

* * * 

The "tipping" in Austria is very general — I 
think more so than in any other country of 
Europe. No matter how small may be the out- 
lay, you are supposed to add something as a 



"tip." That is the reason that every "Kellnerin," 
or waitress, in the dual Empire is able, after a 
few years' service, to set up business for her- 
self. After six or seven years as waitress she 
has stored up through "tips" quite a little for- 
tune and, having found a worthy mate for life, 
she is able, as we say, to begin business "on her 
own hook." * * * 

I shall never forget an experience I once 
had in the historic city of St. Malo in Brittany. 
Traveling in my care was a young man who 
had as yet had no experience with European 
ways. Arriving at St. Malo early in the morn- 
ing, by boat from Southampton in England, we 
took up our quarters in the leading hotel of 
the city — one which catered a great deal to 
English tourists. The good lady — for Madame 
is supreme in a French hotel — thought we 
would remain as her guests for at least a week, 
and consequently gave us reduced rates. But 
in two days we saw the city of Jacques Cartier 
and Chateaubriand from end to end and forth- 
with proceeded to pay our bills and press on 
through Brittany. Madame was in consequence 
disappointed, and as she presented the bill she 
simultaneously touched a button, and, presto ! 
five waiters, a handy man and three chamber- 
maids stood around us as a bodyguard, lest we 
should suffer violence at the hands of the house- 

28 



hold. My young friend sought refuge behind 
a door — I suppose that he might witness how 
I would behave under such heavy fire. But I 
had been in a few engagements before and, hav- 
ing tipped one waiter and one chambermaid, 
we sought refuge in the bus that was to convey 
us to the station. ^ ^ * 

I have a tingling memory of a Venetian 
guide who once proffered me his services, to 
guide me through the labyrinthian streets of 
that city till I reached St. Marks. The streets 
are so full of intricate windings that 1 think 
we must have walked well nigh five miles be- 
fore we reached our objective point. Ever 
afterwards I took a gondola. Venice is not 
for pedestrians. My guide certainly earned his 
few scudis. He perhaps needed it for his dinner 
of black bread and wine. He, too, perhaps was 
a descendant of some of the legionary soldiers 
that had marched with Caesar into Gaul. If 
so, it was something to have a guide with such 
ancestors. 



29 



HENRY WADSWORTH 
LONGFELLOW 



THE POET LONGFELLOW 



L 



ET my theme to-day be our sweet poet of 
the home and fireside— Henry Wadsworth 
Longfellow. Not that I desire to appraise him, 
for this belongs to the reader. Just simply to 
recall some of his more popular poems and 
speak of the circumstances that attended their 
birth and genesis. t * * 

Longfellow has told us himself how he came 
to write many of his poems. It is strange how 
the fire of inspiration touches the lips and hearts 
of some poets. A fact worth noting in this 
connection is that the subject of a poem may, 
so to speak, haunt the dreams and thoughts 
of a poet for weeks and months before it has 
been set down on paper. No doubt this is true 
of all art, and it would be interesting indeed to 
know how long the shadowing and uplifting 
wings of inspiration hovered over a Dante, a 
Goethe, a Wagner and a Michael Angelo ere 
they produced a Divine Comedy, a Faust, a 
Parsifal and a Last Judgment. 
* * * 

But perhaps it is well that great artists do 
not betray or reveal to the world their sweet 
communion, their sweet converse, with the 

33 



guests of inspiration, with the guests of the 
soul. As I have already said, Longfellow, 
however, has taken us into his confidence and 
told us the genesis of many of his beautiful 
poetic productions. He wrote the "Psalm of 
Life" when quite a young man. It was, he 
tells us, a bright day and the trees were bloom- 
ing and he felt an impulse to write out his aim 
and purpose in life. He put the poem into 
his pocket and sometime later, being solicited 
by a popular magazine for a poem, he sent the 
"Psalm of Life." * * * 

That sweet lyric, "The Bridge," was written 
by Longfellow in great sorrow. He had lost, 
I think, his first wife — for the poet was twice 
married and it will be remembered that 
"Hyperion," according to a pleasing legend, 
was written to win the heart of her who be- 
came his second wife — and Longfellow used to 
go over the bridge to Boston of evenings, to 
meet friends, and return near midnight by the 
same way. The way was silent save here and 
there a belated footstep. The sea rose or fell 
among the wooden piers and there was a great 
furnace on the Brighton hills, whose red light 
was reflected by the waves. It was on such a 
late solitary walk that the spirit of the poem 
came upon him. * * * 

Longfellow has also told us how the "Tales 
of a Wayside Inn" came to assume their form. 

34 



He had published a part of the metrical story 
in magazines. He desired to include them with 
others in a continuous narrative, and he be- 
thought himself of the old Wayside Inn in 
Sudbury, where his father-in-law used some- 
times to give hospitable dinners, but which he 
himself had only once seen. He placed his 
story-tellers there. The student was Mr. Wales ; 
the poet Mr. Parsons, the Dante scholar; the 
Sicilian Luigi Monte ; the Jew Edrehi. There 
were many places described by the poet that 
he had only seen in his mind's eye. Such were 
the scenes of Grand Pre in "Evangeline" and 
the Falls of Minnehaha. "I never wished to 
see Acadia" he once said after the reputation 
of "Evangeline" had become established. "I 
would feel that the sight would not fulfill my 
vision." Longfellow, however, it is said, once 
visited the Wayside Inn, after he had made it 
famous by his poem. 

* * * 

In the composition of Hiawatha, that beauti- 
ful Indian epic which has done so much to im- 
mortalize the aborigine in American literature, 
Longfellow drew from two great sources — 
Schoolcraft's history of the American Indian 
and Father Marquette's diary. From the latter 
Longfellow took whole lines and incorporated 
them in his popular poem. 

35 



As to the mold of the verse in Hiawatha, 
why, the poet, who had a most accurate and in- 
timate knowledge of nearly all the European 
languages and literature, found and followed 
for model the great Finnish tale of Kalevala. 
So closely is Hiawatha fashioned on the great 
Finnish epic that some regard Longfellow's 
poem as a plagiarism. The charge, however, 
is without foundation. As well charge modern 
English poets, because they have chosen the 
Spenserian stanza, with plagiarizing Spenser. 
* >i< * 

Longfellow himself tells us how he came to 
write "Excelsior" : "I wrote 'Excelsior','' he says, 
"after receiving a letter from Charles Sumner 
at Washington full of lofty sentiments. In one 
of the sentences occurred the word 'excelsior.' 
As I dropped the letter that word again caught 
my eye. I turned over the letter and wrote my 
poem. I wrote the 'Wreck of the Hesperus' 
because, after hearing an account of the loss 
of a part of the Gloucester fishing fleet in an 
autumn storm, I met the words 'Norman's woe.' 
I retired for the night after reading the report 
of the disaster, but the scene haunted me. I 
arose to write and the poem came to me in 
whole stanzas." * * * 

Of course it is well known how Longfellow 
came to write "The Old Clock on the Stairs." 
It was suggested to him by the simile used 

36 



in a sermon by a French priest who likened 

eternity to the pendulum of a clock, which went 

on forever, saying : "Toujours-jamais ! Jamais- 

toujours!" "Forever-never! Never-forever !" 

And when a visitor was once being shown 

through Longfellow's home, the poet said, "The 

clock in the corner of the room is not the one 

to which I refer in my 'Old Clock on the 

Stairs.' That clock stood in the country house 

of my father-in-law at Pittsfield, among the 

Berkshire hills." ^ „, 

* * * 

Longfellow is one of the sweetest poets in 
the English language. It is true that he lacks 
sublimity and strength, but he possesses a 
grace, tenderness and humanity that have 
opened the door of every heart to him, it mat- 
ters not in what clime. 



When studying in Europe a few years ago I 
was astonished at the knowledge and apprecia- 
tion which Germans, Belgians, French and Ital- 
ians have of him. He is translated into nearly 
all European languages and, as I write, I have 
before me an excellent German translation of 
many of his sweetest and best known lyrics — 
the work of a German professor at Dresden. 



37 



LANGUAGES, MAGAZINES 
AND CRITICISM 



THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 



©UR good old mother tongue — the heritage 
of centuries — shall here be my theme. 
Of all languages it is the most composite and, 
while neither the most logical nor clear, it is 
marked by a richness of expression, a wealth 
of vocabulary and a flexibility unsurpassed by 
any other language of modern times. It has 
not the precision or artistry of the French, the 
word-building genius of the German, the spirit- 
ual suggestiveness of the Celtic or the subtle 
nuances of the Spanish or Italian. 
* * * 
Yet this noble tongue that Shakespeare and 
Milton once "spake" has, we might say, a very 
gift of tongues. It is English but it is more 
than that. It embodies something of the soul 
of all speech known to civilized nations. By 
the infusion of the majestic language of Virgil 
during various epochs and centuries of its life, 
it shares in the stateliness of Latin genius, while 
its Saxon veins throb with the warmth and 
directness of the plain but expressive turn or 
thought of the days of Alfred the Great. Nor 
has it lost entirely the courtly polish of its 

4i 



Norman ancestry or the noblesse oblige of the 
days, dark yet urbane, of the unfortunate 
Stuarts. * * * 

But, truth to say, like its people it has been 
a pirate and freebooter upon every sea and has 
not only robbed the precious word-argosies of 
other nations but in some cases has maintained 
that these gipsy children are its own. But, just 
because the English language is so composite 
and full of the accent of every strange land, it 
is thereby the more difficult to perfect — the 
more difficut to polish and prune and make 
truly like unto itself. 

* * * 

A linguistic phenomenon, strange but inter- 
esting, is the new molding, the new accent that 
has come into its life since it has found an- 
other home under New World stars. For as- 
suredly the English of London and New York 
or Boston differs as widely as does the trend of 
thought there. This is, however, in every way in 
accordance with the law and growth of lan- 
guages. Separate the sprig from its parent 
root and you have in time a tree bearing a 
family likeness, it is true, but quite individual 
in form, branch and outline. 

* * * 

It is humanity that works this change psy- 
chologically, aided by every accident of time 

42 



and place. By the way, we have an excellent 
illustration of this in the second book of Virgil's 
Aeneid, wherein is described the bloody combat 
between the Greeks and Trojans. Troy of 
course was a Greek colony, but so many years 
had intervened since its foundation that its peo- 
ple spoke a Greek differing much in accent 
from that of Sparta or Athens. And though, 
as it will be remembered, the Trojans at the 
suggestion of Coroebus played the ruse of 
changing shields and donning the arms of the 
Greeks, yet they were discovered because of 
the difference of their accent : 

"Primi clipeos mentitaque tela 

Agnoscunt, atque ora sono discordia signant." 

* * * 

It is true that Homer assumes that the 
Greeks and Trojans spoke the same language, 
which is no doubt correct, and the difference 
between them very likely was merely that of 
a dialect. * * * 

It has always seemed strange to me how 
localized the English accent has become here 
in America. See how clearly differentiated in 
accent is the speech of the man from Maine, 
the man from Indiana and the man from Vir- 
ginia, and this despite the fact that there is 
and always has been more or less intercourse 
between all three States. But we think that 

43 



time, instead of emphasizing, will reduce this 
difference. Properly speaking, no dialect has 
ever had root in America. That is, if we under- 
stand by dialect the form or idiom of a language 
peculiar to a province or to a limited region 
or people, as distinguished from the literary 
language of the whole people. The nearest 
approach to a dialect in America is that which 
is represented in the Hoosier poems of James 
Whitcomb Riley, but we think that the diction 
of Riley's poems scarcely represents the every 
day language of the Indiana common people. 
No doubt in the main it is a transcript, but 
exaggerated just enough to create the veritable 
local atmosphere and setting. 

* * * 

We remember here Artemus Ward's humor- 
ous reference to the difference of speech in 
America, where he tells of a convict in Con- 
necticut who, on entering the jail, told the jailer 
with something of pride in his voice that he 
could speak six different languages: Maine, 
New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode 
Island and Massachusetts, and the jailer replied 
gruffly, "Sir, we speak but one language here 
and very little of that." 

* * * 

Nowhere has an English dialect become so 
crystallized and fixed as in England. Take 
for instance Devonshire, Lancashire and York- 

44 



shire, and any one who has visited these three 
English counties knows full well how difficult 
it is to make out the speech of the common 
People. * * * 

As you go north in England you find the 
language of the peasantry, as in Northumber- 
land, approximating very closely to that of the 
neighboring Scotch dialect across the Firth of 
Forth. Indeed the rich homely language of 
Burns will be found as the basis of nearly all 
the dialects of England, for this is in accordance 
again with the unchangeable law of languages 
that their essentials, but not their accidents, live 
ever on. 



45 



A WORD ABOUT LANGUAGES 



THE English, the Americans and the Cana- 
dians are the worst linguists in the world. 
I know nothing about the Australians or the 
Cape Colony people, but I take it that, being 
British colonies, they follow in this respect 
the traditions of the mother country. The 
growth or extension of a language depends 
upon the growth or extension of the nation 
speaking that language. 



For instance, there has been a greater growth 
and extension of English and German as lan- 
guages during the past quarter of a century 
than there has been of French, because of the 
increasing and preponderating influence of the 
United States, England and Germany in the 
councils of nations and their development of 
colonies and commerce. Indeed both these lan- 
guages are to-day studied almost solely for 
commercial purposes. I speak here of the 
practical study for the purpose of speaking and 
writing, not their academic, which is limited to 

46 



their theoretical study in our schools and col- 
leges, and which frequently has but little value 
even as a mental discipline. But, while the 
French language has not had the extension 
of the other two languages, English and Ger- 
man, because the flag of France no longer 
stands for commerce or colony-planting, it has 
had an extension among scholars, savants and 
the elite of thought quite beyond what the po- 
litical or commercial importance of the nation 
behind it would warrant. For, notwithstanding 
the marvelous increase in the number of peo- 
ple who speak English and German to-day, 
French still retains its hold as the universal 
language of scholars and diplomats, as well as 
of courts and kings. Nor, in my opinion, will 
it ever fall from this high estate. 

* # * 

You cannot kill or efface the culture of a 
people flowering through the centuries. France 
has been to mediaeval and modern times what 
Greece was to the ancient world, nor are the 
dramas of Aristophanes, Euripides and So- 
phocles or the sculpture of Phidias or Praxiteles 
of deeper significance to the world of art than 
are the creations of French genius to the cul- 
ture of our day. From the Greeks we get 
ideality and proportion, from the French the 
logical harmony of all beauty and thought. 

47 



Speaking of the fact that French still holds 
its throne in the halls of scholars, I saw this 
well exemplified at Carlsbad in Bohemia last 
summer. Gathered around a table in a restau- 
rant were four tourists, with appetites whetted 
by the keen mountain air of that delightful re- 
sort. One of the quartette, a lady, came from 
Odessa, in Russia, and the three gentlemen 
were, respectively, a Custom House officer from 
Buda-Pesth in Hungary, an officer in the Rou- 
manian army, and the writer. But two of the 
four knew German, and only one English. Now 
we all were in a talking mood, which is not un- 
common when tourists by chance are thrown 
together. It was soon discovered that every one 
of the four knew French, and we were capable 
of conversing freely in the language of Lamar- 
tine and Victor Hugo. 

* * * 

I found that the Russian woman had the best 
command of French and her grip on the facts 
of life, art and government was wonderful. No 
doubt she had never gone to a Vassar or co- 
education university, yet she had a knowledge 
of the world, its peoples, politics and principles 
that would put to shame any "co-ed" nurtured 
under New World stars, with portrait appearing 
monthly in our daily papers. Remember that 
I am not setting up the Russian woman — that 

48 



is, the average Russian woman — as at all the 
equal of the American woman in intelligence. 
She is not. But the educated Russian woman 
is a deep thinker and has a far more richly 
stored mind as to the great facts of life, govern- 
ment, history and art than the brightest of our 
women, whose little educational skiffs but skim 
the great sea of knowledge, yet seldom linger 
to study the mysterious secrets of the deep. 

* * * 

Of course languages are not everything, but 
they are the key to a good deal. They at least 
broaden the mind and make us for the moment 
forget the cottage of our birth. Through lan- 
guages we learn that there have been great 
thinkers and dreamers in this world of ours 
who did not speak the language that "Shake- 
speare and Milton once spake." Through lan- 
guages, too, we get closer to the genius of every 
land — closer to the genius of every people. 
Their acquisition, therefore, will steady our 
judgments and give a new value to our opinions, 
for judgments and opinions based upon senti- 
ment and not upon fact are well-nigh worthless. 

* * * 

Another proof that French is still to the 
scholar in every land, and particularly in Eu- 
rope, of great importance, is the fact that nearly 

49 



every one of the sixteen universities of France 
has a summer session for foreign students. The 
first French university to establish this special 
course or semester for foreign students was, I 
believe, Grenoble, and it draws to-day to its 
lecture-halls during its summer session a very 
large number of students from well-nigh every 
country in Europe as well as America. Dijon 
and Nancy and Caen universities have followed 
suit, and it is not too much to say that during 
the months of July, August, September and 
October thousands of students from England, 
Scotland, Ireland, Norway and Sweden, Russia, 
Italy, Bulgaria, Austria, and especially Ger- 
many, register and follow courses in French in 
the universities of France. 



And yet men will speak of the decay of the 
French language. Not so. If you mean that 
the augmentation of French-speaking people is 
not equal to that of the English or German, yes ; 
but if you mean the interest — the practical in- 
terest taken in French by scholars, students and 
thinkers, it is far from the truth to speak of the 
decay of the language of Racine and Moliere. 

* * * 

Just a word as to the value of French as an 
expression of thought. It is evident to anybody 
who knows anything about languages that for 

5o 



clear, logical, artistic expression the French 
stands alone. Now have we any proof of this? 
Its proof is found in the fact that such a beaute- 
ous body of prose writing is found nowhere as 
in France. He must be steeped in prejudice 
who cannot admit this — nay, voice it from the 
housetops. * * * 

Remember that I am not so enthusiastic 
about French poetry. I think it does not 
measure up to either English or German poetry. 
And in some departments — especially in the 
lyric — I think the German the greatest of all. 
The great songs of to-day are German, and the 
voicing in song of the national heart has never 
been surpassed as yet by any other land. 



51 



CONCERNING COMPOSITION 



1 N one of my recent "chats" I spoke of the 
* composite character of the English lan- 
guage ; to-day I wish to speak more definitely 
and concretely of English composition and the 
great need of word study, if we would hope to 
express ourselves clearly and elegantly in the 
language of Milton and Shakespeare. 

* * * 

Buffon, the great French scientist, tells us 
that "Le style c'est 1'homme" — the style is the 
man. There can be no doubt about the truth 
of this statement. Style simply reflects or reg- 
isters a man's mode or manner of thinking. 
We speak of a diffuse style, a concise style, a 
nervous style, a clear style, a periodic style, all 
of which styles are governed by the mode of the 
thought which orders the sentence. All compo- 
sition, therefore, reduced to its final analysis, 
and all the rules of composition are nothing 
more than thought development. 

* * * 

Now a study of rhetoric in its relation to 
composition is indeed interesting, but its value 

52 



as a means of developing theme-writing may, I 
think, be questioned. Just now there is quite 
a craze in our colleges for a study of the para- 
graph as the most important unit in composi- 
tion. I must confess that I cannot attach such 
importance to a study of the paragraph. We 
speak of prospective, retrospective and transi- 
tional elements in a paragraph, but, if the mind 
has not been developed, so to speak, paragraph- 
ically, all this formal talk about it in the rhet- 
oric class is but a waste of words — a waste of 

time - * * * 

Language is a living organism, and at best a 
knowledge of the rhetorical rules deduced from 
the expression of thought is not at all vital or 
essential to thought expression, and the hours, 
days and months spent in studying this verbal 
fashion-plate are, in my opinion, of very little 
value. The greatest value flows from a close 
and careful study of the office and inherent 
meaning of the word rather than from a study of 
the mode of expression, either in sentence or 
paragraph. * * * 

A well and clearly and logically developed 
mind, possessing an exact knowledge of the 
function of each word, will assuredly write 
clearly and elegantly and with all the graces of 
composition, though he or she may not have 

53 



studied a single paragraph in a class of rhetoric 
or composition. What we sorely need to-day 
is a more accurate knowledge of the words we 
use, and this we can obtain in one way and in 
one way only — by reading the great masters 
of English — a Newman, a Ruskin, a De Quincy, 
a Macaulay, a Matthew Arnold, an Emerson, a 
Bishop Spalding, a Goldwin Smith, a Charles 
A - Dan a- * * * 

It is said that Emerson selected his words 
with the nice care with which a maiden cross- 
ing a brook chooses the dry pebbles whereon 
she safely steps to avoid the water. Again, as 
it is wisdom to be frugal in one's diet, so should 
economy also extend to our use of words. It 
is pitiable to see a thought buried beneath a 
great boulder of words. I think we English- 
speaking people treat our language with less 
consideration than any other people I know of. 
Listen to the language in our street cars, around 
the family table and in our society drawing- 
rooms and tell me if our good mother tongue 
could not every day indict us for verbal murder. 
We send our sons and daughters to colleges 
and academies to become educated, and they 
return with as shabby a garment of English as 
was the bodily vesture of the Prodigal Son 
when he returned to his father's house. I must 

54 



confess that I know no people to-day who un- 
derstand and study their own language better 
than do the French. No wonder the language 
of Bossuet and Lamartine is a clear, artistic and 
logical vehicle for the expression of thought. 
# * * 

I think slang betrays or reflects superficiality 
of mind and poverty of language. Go to Ire- 
land to-day and you will hear scarcely a slang 
word among its people. The poorest of its in- 
habitants are too rich in wealth of words to 
resort to slang. They may not talk elegantly, 
the peasantry of Ireland, but be assured that 
their language will be expressive and their 
thought always original. They have no need to 
resort to the language of the race-course nor to 
that of the baseball or football field. Slang you 
will certainly find in Europe, but the people who 
use it are classed and segregated, whereas here 
in America it has trickled and trailed through 
every grade of our social and intellectual life. 
A corrective of slang is the constant reading of 
clean, wholesome literature and the compan- 
ionship of scholarly friends. Some one has said 
that God gives us our face, but we make our 
own countenance. It is equally true of our 
speech. I believe that God gave Adam in the 
Garden of Eden a fully rounded and developed 

55 



language — no doubt Eve improved a little on 
this, and her daughters have been following it 
up perseveringly ever since — but the counte- 
nance of language has been the work of man. 

* * * 

Have you ever remarked how delightful it 
is to meet with one, the garden of whose mind 
blossoms with the beauteous flowers of pure 
and goodly thought robed in the dews of choic- 
est diction? It is indeed rest for the wearied 
soul, scorched and parched with the dry deserts 
of thought stretching ever around us. It is, 
too, as grateful as a fountain in a desert, for it 
renews our strength and makes us forget the 
toilsome miles ahead. 



56 



AS TO MAGAZINES 



TJ WORD to-day about some current liter- 
** ature. This is the age of multiplied mag- 
azines and journals of every sort. Every 
school of thought, every religious body of any 
importance, every literary and artistic cult has 
its literary exponent or magazine. In a word, 
we are deluged with magazines — some valuable, 
some pernicious, some vicious. 

* * * 

It is not too much to say that America has 
discovered the popular magazine. But America 
has not yet discovered the high class and truly 
informing magazine. The American magazine 
is not thought-provoking — it is often not even 
suggestive. It is entertaining and interesting, 
but does not contain a great deal of meat. Take 
for instance the Dublin Review. It has a tone 
and a literary value entirely superior to the best 
American literary magazine of our day. I sup- 
pose the Atlantic Monthly, staid and stereo- 
typed in thought as it is, is the first of our 
American literary magazines. 

* * * 

But the Atlantic Monthly is not what it used 
to be in the days of Lowell, Longfeiiow and 

57 



Thomas Bailey Aldrich. It has somewhat fallen 
from literary grace and is a kind of gipsy child 
among the literary elite. It occasionally has a 
good paper up to the old standard, but its lapses 
are so many that its sins of omission linger in 
the literary memory. 

* * * 

We have too much "smart" writing here in 
America and not enough of scholarship and 
thought. The Atlantic Monthly had noble birth 
— it was born under good literary auspices and 
received its baptism in the regular literary way. 
But times have changed and some of its sister 
magazines have donned such glowing attire and 
frizzled their hair and played the adventuress — 
and all this with such success that a well be- 
haved magazine like the Atlantic Monthly, cor- 
rect in its character and bearing and always of 
a good moral tone, can scarcely hold its admir- 
ers any longer. * * * 

Among French periodicals "Les Annales Lit- 
teraires" is, I think, the best. The French excel 
in literary criticism, and it is not to be wondered 
at that their literary reviews are of a high order. 
Just fancy the late Ferdinand Brunetiere at the 
head of a magazine. What judgments you might 
expect to get. He is unquestionably the great- 
est French critic since the days of Saint Beuve. 



58 



Go to Brussels and you will speedily learn 
what the Belgians are doing for criticism. Like 
the French they, too, have a standard. In 
America we have no standard. All kinds of lit- 
erary heresies are taught in our universities. 
The professors are partisans. Is it any wonder 
that our magazines are also partisans? Take, 
for instance, the North American Review and 
the Forum. Glance at their literary reviews and 
you will soon learn what little real value can be 
often attached to them. 

* * * 

To be a good essayist is to be a good maga- 
zine writer and editor. Take James Russell 
Lowell. He was one of the most successful ed- 
itors that the Atlantic Monthly ever had. Why ? 
Simply because Lowell was a very prince of 
essayists. He had a command of clear-cut Eng- 
lish rarely possessed by any other of his coun- 
trymen. * * * 

The editor of a magazine should be, above 
all, versatile. He need not necessarily be deep. 
In fact, if he is too deep for his readers, as was 
Dr. Brownson, his magazine will not satisfy his 
constituency. The people will murmur — they 
may read the magazine as a kind of imposed lit- 
erary penance, but they will always read under 
protest. A well conducted magazine should 
meet the needs of the people, while at the same 
time it uplifts them. 

59 



CRITICS AND CRITICISM 



TJ WORD to-day about criticism and re- 
A "■ views. Some one has said that a man 
becomes critical when he finds that he is 
not creative. I recently heard a professor 
lecturing to a class in elocution, and he 
wisely advised them never to criticise any 
reader unless they could do better them- 
selves. Criticism should be the conscience 
of art and should have in it more construc- 
tion than destruction. The critical faculty, 
as a general thing, is not very well developed 
among English-speaking people — that is, they 
lack standards and principles. It is true, they 
freely criticise, indeed often blindly. 

He * * 

I have more admiration and respect for 
French criticism along the line of art and liter- 
ature than any other. Not that I would will- 
ingly agree with it in everything — for instance, 
in the French estimate of the drama — but the 
French mind is eminently logical, artistic and 
full of fair proportion. In this, as I have often 
said, it resembles the Greek mind. Of 

60 



course national prejudice often warps the 
judgment of the critic. I remember once 
picking up a little brochure in a book store in 
Rome. It was the work of an Englishman, in 
which he attacked the art methods of Michael 
Angelo and Raphael. 

* * * 

I read it carefully through just to learn what 
an Englishman had to say of the painters of 
the Last Judgment and the Transfiguration. 
It was certainly destructive criticism. He went 
at Michael Angelo's Moses, in the Church of 
St. Peter's in Chains, as would an Iconoclast in 
the days of image-smashing in the Eastern 
Church. This son of the North from the island 
of fogs and mists, whose people were busy bear- 
baiting, beer drinking, dreaming ol conquest 
on sea and land, and burning martyrs at the 
stake, when Latin Spain and Italy were glorify- 
ing the canvases of the fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries with the dreams of a Murillo, a Titian 
and a Raphael, now assumes to lecture on the 
principles of sculpture and painting to the most 
inspired art children of the earth. 

* * * 

Let me say that deep sympathy is at the basis 
of all true and valuable criticism. Some think 
that the harder you hit the better is the criti- 
cism — that to peel the rind off, figuratively 

61 



speaking, is clever criticism. Now, as a matter 

of fact, criticism should be partly destructive 

and partly constructive — it should be both 
directive and suggestive. 

% % ^ 

There is a criticism, and a very large body of 
it, that is merely perfunctory. Anybody who 
has ever given to the public six or eight works 
and then read the reviews of the books in the 
different journals and magazines will under- 
stand fully what I mean when I say that a large 
body of criticism is merely perfunctory. It 
could not be otherwise, for two reasons. First, 
the reviewer frequently is dealing with a work 
whose merits he does not understand. Sec- 
ondly, to say something about the book in a 
column of review often is his sole purpose and 
end. Often the question of merit is en- 
tirely aside. * * * 

It will be remembered that Oliver Goldsmith, 
the author of "The Deserted Village/' was for 
some time a reviewer of books on a magazine, 
and he always ended up his review with this 
safe and sane, though perfunctory, statement : 
"Had the author read more widely he would 
have written more intelligently." This, of 
course, is a truism and becomes bald in value 
when continually tacked on at the end of a 
review. 

62 



I think the critical side is much overdone in 
the study of literature in all our schools and 
colleges. Is it not time that we should take it 
for granted that Newman and Ruskin and Mac- 
aulay could write prose, and Tennyson, Long- 
fellow and Wordsworth poetry? Continual 
criticism is fatal to assimilation, and all literary 
and art power must pass through the door of 
assimilation. A soul vital at every point, a soul 
open at every pore — if the expression may be 
allowed — this is the requisite in order to reach 
the best in literature. 



63 



ART 



SOMETHING ABOUT ART 



LET me chat with my readers to-day on the 
subject of art — especially that department 
of it which glorifies the canvas. All the fine 
arts — that is, music, architecture, poetry, paint- 
ing and sculpture — are co-radical. Art is beauty 
born of the splendor of truth. Now God is 
absolute truth and, therefore, the source and 
inspiration of all art. The beauty of the crea- 
ture, says St. Thomas Aquinas, is nothing else 
than a participation of the divine beauty by 
created beings. * * * 

With the advent of Christianity a new mean- 
ing was given to art. Ancient art rested in the 
finite. The best work of Phidias and Praxiteles 
has about it not a touch or hint of the infinite. 
It is born of the beauty of the earth and reflects 
as in a mirror its source and origin. But Chris- 
tian art is of heaven and reveals the fullness 
and sanctity of its birth. 

* * * 

The most beautiful, says Thales, the father of 
Greek philosophy, is the world because it is a 
work of God's own art. Goethe gives us the 
world of nature, but there is a higher one — the 

6 7 



world of grace and glory. According to St. 
Augustine, all beauty in created beings is de- 
rived from that beauty which is above the soul, 
and therefore creation leads us by its beauty 
to God. * * * 

Ancient art represented the gods in sensible, 
beautiful form, but nevertheless they are only 
greater men, more beautiful, stronger than we 
are, and immortal ; but in their forms, their feel- 
ings and their passions they are simply mortals. 
Christianity, as a writer says, frees man from 
earthly bonds and fetters and directs his gaze 
heavenward. Christian art does not emphasize 
beautiful form as much as the ancient did. It 
does not despise it, but physical beauty which 
was everything to the Greek appears to the 
Christian as a secondary factor. 
* * * 

An art critic tells us that every work of art 
includes a two-fold element, the soul and its 
embodiment ; the former is constituted by the 
idea, the latter enables this idea to become the 
object of man's contemplation ; therefore the 
artist works with hand and mind. He elevates 
himself above the sensible and still remains in 
the sphere of the sensible, by endowing the 
supersensible with a sensible form. He is, 
therefore, as Goethe once expressed it, "the 
slave and master of nature." 

68 



Let us here for a moment glance at the ex- 
pression of the soul in art, as it feels its way 
through the centuries. For myself I regard 
the Gothic cathedral as the sublimest expres- 
sion of the human mind in art and the best con- 
ception ever born and cradled in the heart of 
man. The Gothic cathedral in its ripened full- 
ness marks the culmination of the ages of 
faith. It is coeval with Dante's Divine Comedy 
and St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa and the Red 
Cross Knight of the Holy Land. 
* * * 
It burst upon the vision of the world like 
some divine flower which, growing unseen in 
the night, fills at dawntide the whole garden with 
fragrance, subduing all eyes and hearts with its 
grace. Soon this great art, so deep in its spirit- 
ual splendor, covered, as a French historian tells 
us, all Europe with a white mantle of churches. 
It' took root first in beauteous France at Sens 
about the time Thomas a'Becket, fleeing from 
the wrath of Henry II, found an asylum in that 
ancient city. This was the very beginning of 

Gothic architecture. 

* * * 

When we turn to painting we see how slow 
was the transition from the stiff Byzantine mo- 
saic portrait to the freedom of a Raphael or a 
Da Vinci or a Titian. Before Raphael, the 
prince of painters, had to come Cimabue and 

69 



Giotto, and the latter needed a St. Francis of 
Assisi and a Dante to evoke the great artistic 
visions of his soul. Then streamed upon the 
fair face of Italy such a glorious light from the 
painter's soul, that its rays to-day fill us with 
such wonder that we would for the moment 
willingly again dwell in these rich and storied 
aisles of the past and kneel as votaries at its 
spiritual shrines. # + ^ 

And here comes up the question, who are the 
great painters of all time — the masters? It is 
assuredly difficult of answer. As with poetry, 
so with painting; it is a matter of taste and 
temperament. Raphael and Murillo — these 
twain should satisfy any heart and these twain 
are certainly among the great painters of all 
time. Add to these the names of Rubens, 
Titian, Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci, Velas- 
quez and Michael Angelo and you have cer- 
tainly a sextette of great painters, though the 
versatile Michael Angelo is unquestionably 
greatest as a sculptor. 



70 



ART AND ITS TIMES 



T| RE these our times productive of a great 
** art or have we fallen upon small and 
barren days, devoid of spiritual inspiration, 
for that is really what all great art means. 
Let us make examination. The work of 
man is reaching upwards, not, however, 
in aspiration but in sky-scrapers. The 
earth and the things of earth have quite 
blinded man's vision. There are indeed 
few who pierce through this mesh of things- 
few who have spiritual vision and see arightly 
the things of God. The nations do not kneel 
—mankind, in its pride of heart, is too all- 
sufficient. It is not a question of sin, for there 
has always been sin in the world. The Ages 
of Faith had as big sinners as the most darkly 
stained epoch of modern times. But the Ages 
of Faith had ever eternity and the judgment and 
mercy of God before its eyes. It sinned, but it 
repented, and in this repentance consists its 
spiritual greatness. # * * 

The spiritual world was a thing real to the 
men and women of the Middle Ages. They 

7i 



acknowledged the presence of God in the great 
temple of life. This is clearly evident in its civ- 
ilization, literature and art, for it was faith in 
God that inspired and fashioned its noblest 
works and monuments. The crusades are co- 
eval with the Gothic cathedral, and the sublime 
song of Dante was but the inspired teaching 
of St. Thomas in verse. No age is greater than 
its spiritual endowment and no art is greater 
than its vision of God. 



To-day modern scholars busy themselves 
seeking moral hiatuses in the character of the 
great artists that illumine the Ages of Faith — 
a Raphael, a Dante, a Petrarch, a Michael An- 
gelo, while their own household gods rill niches 
of unhallowed passions draped with the hand of 
so-called modern culture and refinement. These 
modern scholars rarely pause to take an inven- 
tory of the true state of life around them — they 
are so satisfied with the work of their own 
hands that they are blind in their appraisement 
of the work of God. 



The spiritual note in art is everything. Hu- 
manity of itself can rear nothing but material 
structures. Humanity reared the temples of 

72 



the East, the temples and arenas of Greece and 
Rome, and they are but dust. But the Church 
of God, flying from the purple rage of che Cae- 
sars, sought shelter in the Catacombs and there 
carved in symbols the mysteries of our Holy 
Faith — symbols which will ever abide. It is 
heaven that immortalizes, not man, for the bays 
that bind the brow of earthly fame are withered 
at the very going down of the sun. 
* * * 

This spiritual note is greatly lacking in the 
art and literature of our day. Such art and lit- 
erature cannot, therefore, survive the teeth of 
time. Trumpets may blow and heralds pro- 
claim it, but already is woven for it the shroud 
of neglect and oblivion, for the soul of every age 
and people seeks for the abiding things of God, 
which the hand of man, however deft, cannot 
fashion. 

Great books embalm the very soul of the 
age, great paintings reflect as in a mirror the 
very likeness of the time. Men's spiritual 
dreams, whether embodied in stone or arch or 
the glorious rhythmic creation of song, are the 
true records of a people and a key — an unerring 
key — to their holiest hopes and highest aspira- 
tions. They are volumes, vital in every page, 
with life and thought. 

73 



Those who come after us will not seek to 
learn what manner of age was ours by reading 
book reviews or the minutes of a literary club, 
nor will they seek to ascertain whose paintings 
were hung in the Paris Salons or whose books 
were amongst the six best sellers — they will put 
their spiritual ringer upon the immortal page, 
the immortal canvas — the glorious dream that 
reached to heaven. 



74 



WOMAN: HER EDUCATION 
AND MARRIAGE 



CONCERNING WOMAN 



LET me speak to-day of the important ques- 
tion of the education of our girls, for after 
all, let statesmen enact what laws they will, let 
warriors fight what battles they will, in the last 
analysis it is woman who makes the nation. 
Indeed her position and condition are a true 
key to the civilization of any age or country. 
Take, for instance, the women of Homer, the 
women of Virgil, the women of Dante and the 
women of Shakespeare. Have you not in their 
characters a reflection of their times? 
* * * 

And yet, as a writer tells us, revolution does 
not act on woman as it does on man ; it does 
not enter so radically into her mental organiza- 
tion ; therefore throughout the mutations of 
history she remains a clear and exhaustless 
spring in the depths of life, for its perennial 
beauty and refreshment ; a constant heart in 
the midst of nations for their vitality, purity and 
charities. * * * 

But to return to the theme proper of my 
"Chats" to-day, what, I ask, should be the char- 
acter of the education of a girl intended to be 

77 



a home-builder — a light in the sanctuary of the 
home ? This is assuredly a pertinent and timely 
question in an age when woman, her activities 
and influence, are gaining an attention which 
they never did before. 

* * * 

Perhaps in no other country in the world has 
the education of woman so occupied the public 
mind as in this our own land. Indeed it is only 
here that one sees such institutions as Bryn 
Mawr, Vassar, Trinity, which are universities 
in fact, founded and endowed for the advanced 
education of women. There is nothing like 
them in the Old World, in England, France or 
Germany. The New World is also full of ten- 
tative schemes. It has fads and fashions grow- 
ing on every rose bush. Is its higher education 
of woman a fad? Let us examine it. 

* * * 

There is no denying it that home-building is 
as natural to a woman as nest-building is to a 
bird. Every woman is born with this instinct 
in her heart, and those who depart from its pur- 
pose should be the exception. But in face of 
figures often quoted to the contrary, the intel- 
lectual ambition which induces young girls to 
turn their faces from the sanctuary of home and 
yearn for the altitudes — the pinnacles of schol- 
arly fame that are only reached after a lifetime 
of labor — breaks up this fair dream of home, 

78 



robs it of its fair attractiveness and crushes out 
that instinct which makes woman the altar of 
civilization and the moral regenerator of 
the race. * * * 

You perhaps say in reply that all this higher 
education — this study of Sanskrit, Hebrew, the 
Higher Mathematics, Goethe and the literature 
of Persia — will make her a stronger, fuller 
and better woman within the precincts of home. 
Is this really so? Is it not true that where 
thought goes the heart follows? We look for 
long years of apprenticeship as preparation for 
life's work of head and hand. The intellectual 
training obtained through four years of legal 
study in the absorption of Blackstone or Story 
will not do for the setting of a broken bone or 
the diagnosis of a complicated case — why, then, 
expect that a course in higher education will 
fit a young woman for the responsibilities of a 
home? They are not one whit more kindred 
than law or medicine. Each requires separate 
and special training, and it is folly for enthusi- 
asts to declare that the college-educated woman 
is superior within the home. 
* * * 

In the first place, what does she know of 
home? Till the age of eighteen she has spent 
every moment of her life in preparation for en- 
trance into the university. Her next four years 
are spent in the laboratory, library or lecture- 

79 



room of the university. Now, where comes in 
her knowledge of home ? If there is a domestic 
science what does she or what can she know of 
it? When her husband comes home from the 
shop, the broker's office or the bank, she meets 
him at the dinner table with a smile and an 
array of half-baked cakes and love flies out at 
the window, for how can love and a bad case of 
dyspepsia dwell together? She may be able to 
read Plato in the original and talk in the lost 
language of the Goths, but what do these at- 
tainments avail her in the presence of the facts 
which hold sovereignty in her household? Her 
home, after all, is her true world just now and 
should and must be, as long as she remains a 
true woman. ^ ^ ;|c 

But, pray, let not the reader mistake my 
meaning here. I do not or would not glorify the 
greatness or dignity of household drudgery. 
There is no dignity in labor of any kind — it is 
rather the spirit in which we perform our task 
that lends dignity to toil. Dignity belongs to 
ourselves, not our work. What more dignity is 
there in the art of music than there is in the 
science which presides over the kitchen? None 
whatever. 



80 



SOME MARRIAGE CUSTOMS 



^% STUDY of the various customs, which ob- 
** tain in different countries, in the matter 
of engagements between young men and wo- 
men, might be worthy of a place in our "Chats," 
seeing that the giving in marriage is not at all 
modern, but reaches back to the very Garden of 
Eden. I take it, however, that the preliminaries 
leading up to the engagement of Adam and Eve 
have never been published. All we know is that 
Adam had a deep sleep and, as there were no 
elevated railroads around Eden, Adam probably 
put extras in the contract, and then, after the 
rib was removed and he had rubbed his wonder- 
ing eyes well, he beheld his fiancee ; but, happily 
for him, no mother-in-law was in sight, and he 
had not to produce his bank cheque-book. 

* * * 

Ever since those remote days, all Eve's 
daughters have been plighting their word in 
marriage, but the method or procedure has 
changed with the times, and to note this varied 
method is the purpose of my "Chat" to-day. 

* * * 

In ancient days and, indeed, in the Middle 
Ages, children were betrothed in their cradle, 

81 



and frequently saw each other for the first time 
only on the day of their marriage. This, of 
course, saved a great deal of the expense of our 
modern joy-rides, excursions and private boxes 
at the theater, but it really cut out also all the 
attendant anxiety and fear of diplomatic 
smash-ups. * * * 

In no other country in the world is such free- 
dom accorded young women and men engaged 
as here in America. The nearest approach to 
this is in Germany and Switzerland. In both 
of these countries a young man and woman 
engaged are free to travel together, go for walks 
together, attend the theater and all social re- 
unions without any chaperone. In England and 
America young girls become engaged at their 
own sweet will and then inform their parents of 
the affair. * * * 

In France, where the marriage of "con- 
venance" prevails largely, and where the dowry 
is a most important factor in the marriage 
scheme, the young man can never see his in- 
tended bride save in the presence of her par- 
ents, and in this way often the marriage is con- 
cluded between two young persons who are 
well-nigh strangers to each other. From my 
own observations, while living in France, I 
should say that there are ten marriages with 
love as basis here in America for one of the 

82 



same kind in France. And yet, I am not sure 
but a French woman can hold and retain better 
the love of her husband than an American wo- 
man. To discuss why, would take me too far 
afield here. * * * 

In Transylvania a marriage fair is held every 
year for young girls. The fathers drive to the 
market with their most precious wealth — their 
daughters — in a carriage, and, when they have 
reached the place, the auction commences. The 
father cries out, "I have a daughter to marry; 
who has a son wishing a wife ?" They wrangle 
over the dowry, and finally the agreement is 
struck after much haggling. 

In Lapland, when a young man goes to ask 
the hand of a young girl in marriage, he takes 
care to go always fortified with a good supply 
of whisky. In fact, in order that the bargain 
may be struck, it is generally necessary to 
have drunk several bottles and have smoked 
several packages of tobacco. This has led, 
among the Laplanders, to the habit of prolong- 
ing the engagement as much as possible — at 
least one or two years — so that the presents of 
whisky and tobacco may be more numerous 
and multiplied. 



83 



GOVERNMENT 



FORMS OF GOVERNMENT 



LET me chat with my readers on government 
and systems of government and incident- 
ally refer to parliamentary procedure. The 
English Parliament is called the "Mother of 
Parliaments" and perhaps justly so. Generally 
speaking, a form of government grows out of 
the needs of the people. There is practically, 
them no best form of government. There are 
conditions where a monarchy is best ; there are 
conditions where a tempered absolutism works 
best; there are conditions where nothing but 
a republic or, if you will, democracy, will suit 
the wishes and needs of the people. 
* * * 
Here in our own country republican institu- 
tions have struck down their roots so deeply 
that a change to any other form of government 
would not be tolerated by the people. I remem- 
ber well when President Grant returned from 
girdling the world in the seventies ; he was so 
far the idol of the people that, in a report of the 
reception tendered him, I think it was in New 
York one of the papers, quoting Shakespeare's 
"Julius Caesar," said, "They thrice presented 

87 



him a kingly crown which he did thrice refuse." 
So as far back as the seventies, you see, there 
was a hint of imperialism in the American mind 
in certain quarters. It touches the pride of a 
ruler to wear a crown, although the prince of 
dramatists has said, "Uneasy lies the head that 
wears a crown." * * * 

But the air cleared and the White House 
escaped the trappings of imperial pomp and 
show and our country, cradled in republicanism, 
has traveled along its path of progress, the won- 
der and admiration of the nations of the earth. 
This, notwithstanding the fact that its footsteps 
have been and are to-day beset with many dan- 
gers. What we hope will always save this 
goodly commonwealth is the great common 
sense of its people, for Americans are emi- 
nently intuitive and practical. 
* * * 

Now intuitive and practical seem at first sight 
to be at variance with each other. Not so, how- 
ever. Intuitive does not necessarily mean ideal- 
istic or theoretical, but rather the power of dis- 
cerning a truth through experience, without any 
process of reasoning or deduction. This really 
valuable gift, I hold, Americans possess in a 
high degree, and this with their great common- 
sense way of looking at things will, I consider, 
hold them almost always within the orbit of 
wise government and free from national crimes. 

88 



Another and a greater danger, I consider, 
threatens the life of our commonwealth. It is 
the loosening of the moral bonds which hold 
society together. Some one has said that, were 
it not that the American people are so engrossed 
in the making of money, their moral pace would 
be more startling than that of France of to-day. 
But the truth is that our country quite outstrips 
the France of to-day in many of its besetting 
sins. We sometimes smugly forget our record. 
In the divorce court we surpass every other 
nation save Japan, which has three times as 
many divorces as our country, while we, on the 
other hand, have more than three times as many 
divorces as France. If you would know the 
dangers that beset the rule of the people, con- 
sider well the fact that aside from Japan, which 
is an oriental country where marriage has 
never been considered aught but a civil con- 
tract, the three foremost republics of our day — 
the United States, France and Switzerland- 
lead the world in divorce — nay, have more than 
five times as many divorces as all the other 
civilized and Christian countries put together. 
Is this not freedom gone mad? 
* * * 

Again, our record for homicides is equally 
startling. Dr. Andrew D. White, ex-president 
of Cornell University, recently pointed out that 
we have more homicides in proportion to our 

8 9 



population than any three countries in the 
world. In the face of these facts it is difficult 
to be optimistic for our future. With respect 
to our national government, yes ; with respect 
to the enforcement of law and order and the 
protection of life and the observance of God's 
laws delivered on Mount Sinai, the future of 
our country is certainly not too bright. 
* * * 

But I think I hear you say, "Remove the 
causes." Yes, but these causes are deep-seated 
and many. Only the teaching of the Catholic 
Church can eventually hold our country in its 
moral orbit. When the moral mercury drops 
low at the portals of our homes no legislation, 
however well directed, can rectify it. This 
thing is from God and is not of the councils of 
men. Civic order may indeed be restored and 
the protection of life secured and crime in the 
public eye reduced, but the altar of the home 
around which kneels the nation is tended by 
acolytes of faith and hope and love — obedience 
to the Divine will and a hearkening to those 
spiritual guides — the priesthood of God — to 
whom has been entrusted the salvation of 
our souls. 



90 



LITERATURE 



LYRIC POETRY 



LET me chat to-day about the lyric as a form 
of poetry. The lyric, of course, is entirely 
personal — purely subjective. It deals with an 
emotion. It is always simple not complex, and 
he is the best writer of lyrics who lays bare in 
simple and direct language the sentiment which 
sways his heart. * * * 

The lyric at times stirs up the drama, the bal- 
lad and sometimes the epic, though its pres- 
ence is felt but little in the latter. It also abides 
in the sonnet and the ode. Take for instance 
Shakespeare's tragedy of Romeo and Juliet — 
its very flood-light is the lyrical. Never did 
emotion in a drama hold the stage in its pos- 
session as in this beautiful lyrical drama. The 
minor chord of portending catastrophe for the 
"star-crossed" lovers rings through it from the 
outset, and pity and sighs form its sad course. 

* H= * 

Every country in the world has its lyric 
writers and, unlike to the drama, the lyric has 
not found expression in epochs, for it belongs 
equally to every age. To-day Germany is de- 
cidedly richer in lyrics than any other country 
of Europe. This can easily be accounted for. 
The Germans are full of sentiment — patriotic, 

93 



convivial, amorous. German poetry is full of 
love songs, and the Teuton cares not if the 
whole world knows that he is fast in the meshes 
of love. Travel, for instance, through Germany 
and you will meet these "verlobt" parties in the 
compartments of the trains, and they will take 
a particular pride in telling you how long they 
are engaged. You will find a good deal of the 
same frankness in the English people. 

The poetry of Scotland is also very rich in 
lyrics. The Scottish nature is deep and warm 
and convivial, albeit in sentiment it is under 
certain circumstances cautious and reserved. 
It would be difficult to match Burns as a lyric 
poet, though for finish and delicacy of thought 
he is not equal to Tom Moore. Burns' lyrics 
have the fragrance of the heather and the joy 
of the wind-swept waste in them. He is essen- 
tially the lyric poet of democracy, and his notes 
of independence and freedom have a double 
value, seeing that they had birth in a time when 
class distinction dominated his native land. 

Irish lyrics have a tenderness and flavor all 
their own. The love lyric of Ireland is made up 
of homage and extravagance. Compared with 
the confession of love vowed by an Irish wooer 
the warm sentences of Romeo in the moonlit 
garden of Verona are but as water unto wine. 
It goes without saying, therefore, that an Irish- 

94 



man is the best wooer in the world. His kins- 
man in Brittany is of a like nature. So both 
Brittany and Ireland are rich in love lyrics. 
The courts of love that marked the home of the 
ancient troubadour have not yet in either land 
"folded their tents like the Arabs and silently 
stolen away." * * * 

The greatest patriotic lyric ever written was 
composed by a Frenchman— De Lisle. Yet its 
greatness abides in the music rather than in the 
words. The Marseillaise is the most stirring 
martial lyric ever composed, though, as I have 
indicated already, its words do not amount to 
much. But its music is superb. It has all the 
proud soaring ardor of "la belle France" in its 
every note. People who sing such a song could 
never be a subject people. It is keyed in a 
measure of triumph. Its every note, lofty and 
thrilling, denotes victory. 

# * * 

We have been too busy in America to pro- 
duce a great body of lyrics, nor has our national 
song yet been written. Neither "The Star- 
Spangled Banner" nor "America" nor the "Bat- 
tle Hymn of the Republic" voices the heart of 
this great and growing land. Some day it will 
be written and it will thrill. The land of the 
Maple set under the stars of the North has 
found a noble, patriotic expression in the beau- 
tiful lyric "Canada"— the work of a gifted 
French-Canadian. 

95 



THE TRUE POET 



[ T is said that every one is a poet in embryo. 
* The shepherd who stands upon the hillside 
to look at the rainbow — the covenant of God's 
promise set in the heavens — or the waning sun 
as it sinks to rest while, as the Elizabethan poet 
says, all nature blushes at the performance, is 
quite as much the poet as the inspired singer 
of lofty rhymes, though he may not have em- 
bodied his soul-dreams in the measured music 
of verse. * * * 

Yet it must be confessed that your true poet 
is something more than a lover of beauty. The 
first essential of a true poem is that it should 
have pulse in its lines — that there should be a 
soul-current bearing it up — that its music be the 
notes of true inspiration. It will be remem- 
bered that Edgar Allen Poe, no mean authority 
as to the true principles of poetry, maintains 
in his essay on 'The Poetic Principle" that no 
long poem can be true poetry. The author of 
"The Raven" and "The Fall of the House of 
Usher" would thereby exclude such poems as 
Milton's "Paradise Lost," Goethe's "Faust" 
and Dante's "Divine Comedy." 

9 6 



The great mistake made to-day in the ap- 
praisement of poetry is that we magnify tech- 
nique and the artistic, forgetting that, after all, 
neither one nor the other constitutes the su- 
preme life or value of a true poem. We have 
this artistic sense so overdone that in ninety 
per cent of the poems that appear in our cur- 
rent magazines there is no evidence of the least 
inspiration, nor is there any thought that could 
not be just as well expressed in prose form. 
* * * 

There are writers of verse to-day who, while 
their wings do not trail in the dust, move along 
so low a plane that their poetry, if indeed it 
may be termed poetry, has caught the color and 
stain of the earth. How far the late Francis 
Thompson was removed from this those who 
have read his great poem, "The Hound of 
Heaven/' know full well. Thompson is the very 
best exemplar of what I am contending for — 
that poetry is of the soul — it is vision ; it is im- 
agination ; it is fire. Yes, fire, from the altar of 
true inspiration, borne by the thurifers of God, 
who stand eternally at the altar of Truth and 
Beauty and serve God in the great temple 
of Life. * * * 

There is no doubt that here in America we 
have been paying too much tribute to mere 
artistry in poetry. Just analyze the work of 

97 



such poets as Richard Henry Stoddard, Ed- 
mund Clarence Stedman, Thomas Bailey Aid- 
rich and Richard Watson Gilder, all of the 
artistic school, and you will readily recognize 
that all four lack the real pulse of poetry — the 
divine fire of inspiration. It is quite true that 
all four have written some charming poems, full 
of the glow of beauty and hallowed as the breath 
and memory of a sacred shrine, but they lack 
that miracle of thought, that Patmos of the soul, 
which gives our earth hints and glints of the 
spiritual beauty beyond — which expresses life 
in terms of eternity set to the music and melody 
of eternal beauty. * * * 

The true poet is a prophet of the people and, 
if true to the gifts given him of God, will lead 
the world to the higher tablelands of life and 
living. He has been consecrated for his divine 
office of song by a gift of God, and, if he does 
not turn from his high vocation and look down 
towards Camelot, he will assuredly bless the 
earth, and the seedlings of his grace will take 
root and blossom in all the gardens of mankind. 



9 8 



THE TECHNIQUE OF POETRY 



T TO-DAY my chat shall be academic and in- 
tended more particulary for those who 
are interested in poetry on the side of its tech- 
nique. It is Mrs. Browning who says that every 
spirit builds its own house. To my mind much 
time is lost in many of our schools and colleges 
studying the technique of poetry, quite apart 
from the feeling or emotion which, through its 
unifying action, shapes, fashions and molds the 
whole poem. * * * 

Be assured that when the inspiration is strong 
and the fires burning at their full height metre, 
melody, rhyme and all the coefficients of poetic 
expression will take care of themselves. This is 
what Mrs. Browning means when she says that 
every spirit builds its own house. 
* * * 

A study of the technique of any art is unques- 
tionably interesting and of value, but it is not a 
primary factor in the study of art, and to em- 
phasize it as such is to lose sight of the function 
and meaning of all art. Take, for instance, the 

99 



vocal interpretation of poetry. Only through 
a comprehension of the thought, which begets 
sympathy and thereby places the reader in the 
position and mood of the writer of the poem, 
can any reader hope to achieve success. 

The laws or principles that govern any art 
flow out of the divine essence or energy of the 
art — whether the art be poetry, sculpture, music 
or painting. Indeed, imagination and feeling 
constitute almost the whole of art. Take these 
out of poetry and what have you got? For in- 
stance, rob the work of Shakespeare or Dante, 
Milton or Goethe of imagination or feeling, and 
you make these poets poor, indeed. 

:Jc sk s|s 

All forms of poetry, too, seek their own ap- 
propriate metre, verse and stanza. Look at de- 
scriptive poetry, for instance, or narrative or 
didactic. It has a metre peculiar to itself — a 
metre which grows out of the needs of the 
theme. Tennyson never could have built up his 
great metaphysical poem and elegy "In Me- 
moriam," had he employed a stanza in which 
the first and third lines rhymed, for it would 
have stemmed and stopped the flow of his great 
organ thought, which keys so sublimely this 
whole cathedral of song. 

ioo 



How well poetic thought laden with the full 
fire of inspiration seeks out its own metre is 
seen in such poems as Browning's "How They 
Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix" 
and Tom Hood's "Bridge of Sighs." Notice 
the hurry and commotion in the first and the 
strain of nervous tension and pathos in the sec- 
ond, and how well the flow of verse voices or 
reflects both. * * * 

Perhaps the greatest master of melody among 
modern English poets was Swinburne. Yet, 
there are passages in Tennyson that it would 
be difficult to match. This ear for fine melody 
on the part of the poet is a distinct gift in itself. 
Spenser possessed it in a high degree. Indeed, 
it may be questioned if any other English poet 
equals the author of the "Faerie Queen" in the 
melodious marshalling of words. 
* * * 

Then we have that strange poetic genius and 
friend of Wordsworth's, Coleridge, whose two 
poems, "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and 
"Christabel," are full of passages of wonderful 
melody. Nor should we forget Shelley — the 
ethereal Shelley, who spread his poetic wings in 
air so rare and high that never before had gen- 
ius sought to sail such distant seas of thought, 
nor sing from summits that seemed to pierce 

IOI 



the blue pavilion of heaven. These then are the 
great masters of poetic melody — Spenser, Cole- 
ridge, Shelley, Tennyson and Swinburne. 

* * * 

Speaking of the melody in Tennyson's poetry 
reminds me that, while the author of "The 
Idylls of the King" has rarely been surpassed 
as a master of melody, he was never able to 
achieve any success as a musician. Browning, 
however, though his verse is often rugged, zig- 
zag and full of strange stops, was a musician of 
far more than ordinary gifts. How paradoxical 
then is not genius. We think of Dante Gabriel 
Rossetti, who, it is said, should have painted his 
poems and written his paintings. Perhaps in 
the case of Rossetti and Browning the fires of 
inspiration did not burn strong enough. 



102 



SOME IRISH AUTHORS 



TJ WORD with my reader about Irish au- 
** thors. Is there a national poet of Ire- 
land in the sense that Schiller represents Ger- 
many or Burns represents Scotland and, if there 
is one, who is he? Of course the name of Tom 
Moore at once leaps to the lips. But was 
Moore really an Irish national poet? 

* * * 

I scarcely think the author of the "Irish Mel- 
odies" and "Lallah Rookh" can be said to have 
voiced Ireland in national hopes and her dear- 
est dreams. Moore was never the poet of the 
common people as Burns was, yet he did a great 
work for Ireland, especially among the upper 
classes of the English, for his beautiful lyrics 
penetrated the drawing-rooms of England — 
drawing-rooms alien to himself and his ideals. 

* # * 

Nor can it be denied that the poet breathed 
an Irish soul into his work. One thing is cer- 
tain, that Moore is not only the sweetest of all 
Irish lyric writers but the sweetest song 
writer of the English-speaking world. There is 

103 



a mingling of melody and Celtic witchery in his 
lines, but he is really not an Irish poet of patri- 
otic action and inspiration. 
* * * 
Nor can Moore be called a poet of the "Irish 
Cause" — not at least in the sense that Thomas 
Davis was. Take Davis' "The West's Awake." 
Why, there is more fire in its lines than in all 
Tom Moore ever wrote. Yet I would not have 
you believe that I depreciate Tom Moore. He 
is a glorious child of Erin, rocked and dandled 
and lulled to patriotic rest by the admiring 
throngs of English drawing-rooms. 

The destruction of Ireland's nationality was 
the destruction of her art. What Irish genius 
might have done, had it not beaten its wounded 
and bleeding wing against the iron bars of op- 
pression, we know not. I make no doubt, had 
Ireland been free to fashion her immortal 
dreams in marble or on the canvas or in lofty 
rhyme or in the subtle notes of song, perhaps 
we would have had an Irish Michael Angelo or 
an Irish Dante or an Irish Raphael or an Irish 
Wagner. * * * 

But Ireland is young yet in the plenitude of 
spiritual power. She is just now being taken to 
the font for national baptism. She has yet to 
feel her life in every limb. The youngest 

104 



amongst us may see such a renaissance of Irish 
art as will astonish the world. She has, thank 
God, the spiritual endowment, and that means 
everything. * ' * * 

Nor as yet has the Irish novel been written. 
Carleton and Lever and Banim and Maria 
Edgeworth and Gerald Griffin have given us 
something, but that something falls far below 
the possibilities in Irish fiction. No one has 
yet portrayed in fiction the eternal heart of Ire- 
land. Perhaps this will be done by an Irish 
exile. It is only when separated from our 
mother that we fully value her tenderness 
and love - * * * 

I would like to see a greater appreciation of 
the Celt in literature. I would like our Irish 
societies to bring out in their programs what 
Irish genius stands for — its sublimity, its rev- 
erence, its vision, its spirituality. The soul of 
the Celt rests upon the mountain peaks of life, 
under the tents of God, with the stars for altar 
tapers drenched in the eternal dews of heaven. 



io5 



A WORD ABOUT TRANSLATIONS 



DESIRE to chat to-day with my readers 
■ about translations of English classics that 
are made in various foreign languages. Every 
student who has ever taken a college arts course 
knows full well the help and danger that lurk in 
translations — help if these translations are used 
wisely and judiciously, danger if they are used 
as a "pony" to bear up and land the student 
across the stream of examinations, without 
having to buffet the strong current of toil 
and study. * * * 

I regard translation as the supreme test of 
language study and language acquirement. To 
translate an ode of Horace into good English 
verse one must know well Horatian Latin, as 
well as its equivalent in English. 
* * * 

The late Professor Goldwin Smith could make 
the most accurate and felicitous translation of 
Latin verse that I have ever known. And why? 
Simply because, in the first place, he was a dis- 
tinguished Latin scholar, and, in the second 
place, he had a command of English possessed 
by few other scholars in our day. 

106 



One of the most difficult of translations is 
Shakespeare. The great master dramatist, as 
is well known, is translated into well-nigh all 
the European languages, but German scholars 
have succeeded much the best in this effort or 
task. There are two reasons for this : German 
scholars are both thorough and painstaking, 
and again Shakespearean mode of thought is 
much more kindred to the German mind than 
it is to either the French, Italian or Spanish 
mind. * * * 

For, after all, if you leave out the Celtic ele- 
ment — that mystery and magic which run like 
a golden thread through so many of his plays 
and which is essentially Celtic— Shakespeare is 
a literary cousin of the master poets of Ger- 
many, though separated from them by a gulf 
of many years. Again, aside from the mode of 
thought, if you leave out the Latinized words 
how close do not the German words come to 
the Anglo-Saxon, especially in their social and 
suggestive meaning? 

* * # 

Taken in all, however, the Italians do into their 
mother tongue more foreign classics than any 
people in Europe. Why, it is simply amazing 
what a knowledge a well educated Italian wo- 

107 



man has of Byron, Tennyson, Longfellow, 
Shakespeare, as well as such prose writers as 
Ruskin and Macaulay. I will hazard the opin- 
ion that to-day in Rome can be found ten times 
as many women who have read the plays of 
Shakespeare and the poems of Longfellow, as 
there are Chicago women who know Dante and 
Carducci. Yet we sometimes smugly consider 
ourselves superior to the world. 

* * * 

Let me here give first the English text of 
Longfellow's beautiful sonnet on the "Divine 
Comedy" of Dante, which usually precedes in 
our poet's translation of the Florentine's great 
trilogy, the "Inferno" : 

Oft have I seen at some cathedral door 
A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat, 
Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet 

Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor 

Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er; 
Far off the noises of the world retreat; 
The loud vociferations of the street 

Become an undistinguishable roar. 

So, as I enter here from day to day, 
And leave my burden at this minster gate, 

Kneeling in prayer and not ashamed to pray, 
The tumult of the time disconsolate 
To inarticulate murmurs dies away, 
While the eternal ages watch and wait. 

108 



Now here is a German translation of this 
beautiful sonnet. How far the translator, un- 
known to me, has caught the spirit, the reader 
having a good knowledge of German may 
judge : 
Oft sah an Pforten mancher Kathedraele 

Ich einen Werksmann der vor Staub und Schwuele, 
Sein Bundel hinwarf und im Nahgefuehle 
Der Gottheit sich bekreuzt an dem Portale 

Manch Paternoster sprach verklaert vom Strahle 
Der Andacht, er in solcher duft gen Kuehle; 
Der Strassen Laerm, das laute Marktgewuehle, 
Ward leis' Gesumme hier mit einem Male. 
So mag ich buerdelos, mit taeglich neu 

Erweckter Inbrunst auch zum Muenster schreiten 
Und knieend beten— beten sonder Scheu! 
Da stirbt mir der Tumult trostloser Zeiten 

Verhallend im Germurmel hin,— doch treu 
Umsteht die Hochwacht mich der Ewigkeiten. 



iog 



SNOBS. FADS AND 
CUSTOMS 



AS TO SNOBS AND SNOBBERY 



*|*HE subject of my chat to-day will be snob- 
™ bery. It will be remembered that the 
great English novelist, Thackeray, has a book 
on snobs, and any one who observes — who 
travels with what the French say, "les yeux 
grands ouverts," eyes wide open — cannot but 
see that every land has its snobs. Thackeray 
certainly had no lack of subjects in England, 
for, if there is any land in the whole world 
cursed by snobbery, it is England. Your Eng- 
lish snob is the fullest fledged of any. 

* * * 

Some few weeks ago Joseph Smith, a member 
of the Papyrus Club of Boston, and an intimate 
friend and admirer of the late John Boyle 
O'Reilly and James Jeffrey Roche, contributed 
a paper on "Snobs and Snobbery" to the Phila- 
delphia Saturday Evening Post. This paper 
was very cleverly written and treated of the dif- 
ferent kinds of snobs. In this paper Mr. Smith 
says that a true man seeks eminence while 
a snob seeks prominence ; the one fame, the 

ii3 



other notoriety ; one struggles for a place in 
the heart and history of the age ; the other for 
a position in the eye and ear of his generation. 

Easy money, says Mr. Smith, is the fertilizer 
of the soil in which snobbery flourishes ; easy 
money is the mother of vulgarity, pretense and 
ostentation ; the maker of the habits and man- 
ners that clothe the newly rich like ill-fitting 
garments. * * * 

In England you will not find much snobbery 
among the nobility. They have secured long 
ago their position. They are not striving to be 
in the public eye ; they are in the public eye 
without any striving. 

In England it is the middle class — the imita- 
tors, the would-be aristocracy, what the French 
call "les poseurs" — who thrust every day snob- 
bery in your face. Of course, the women are 
the greatest sinners in this respect — they it is 
who in every land divide up society into "sets" 
and curse social life with either "small talk" or 
scandal. When you get a noble woman, really 
intellectual and yet unassuming, she is verily 
an altar before which to worship, but perhaps 
the greatest weakness in the whole feminine 
make-up is that she is so given to playing a role 
— that she rarely is what she seems. 

114 



Man is conceited, but woman is vain, and 
herein lies the difference between the twain. 
Did you ever observe two women, ambitious to 
appear other than they are, become acquainted 
for the first time ? It runs something like this : 
"I'm delighted to meet you, Mrs. Blank. So 
you're from Detroit? My husband is well ac- 
quainted there. By the way, do you know 

Colonel ? He's the vice-president of the 

Michigan Central, and a great friend of ex- 
President Roosevelt. When the ex-President 
goes to Detroit, he always stays with him." 
"No, I am not acquainted with him, but I have 
a friend who knows him well. By the way, are 
you acquainted in Chicago? Do you know 

Judge , who is spoken of as President 

Taft's choice for the vacancy in the Supreme 
Court?" * * * 

This is assuredly a species of snobbery and 
a species very common. Then we have intel- 
lectual snobbery — the desire to appear learned. 
Look to-day at the rush that is made to appear 
in portrait in the papers, all of which is a vulgar 
thirst for notoriety, and this in itself is of the 
very breath and life of veritable snobbery. 

Why, a few little girls cannot graduate in 
some elementary school, having acquired the 
rudiments of spelling, arithmetic and geog- 
raphy, but their friends move heaven and earth 

115 



— and the editors, to get their photos in the 
papers. Time was when appearing in portrait 
with a "write up" in a paper signified distin- 
guished merit — in authorship, scholarship, art 
or philanthropy, but that time has passed and 
real merit now, instead of being distinguished, 
has become mediocrized — vulgarized. And all 
this is snobbery. * * * 

I must confess that I have found less snob- 
bery in France than in any other country in the 
world. The Frenchman is not without his 
faults, but snobbery is certainly not one of them. 
Charge him with artificiality and insincerity in 
his courtesy and politeness if you will, you can- 
not charge him with being a snob. I think the 
reason for this is found in the fact that your 
Frenchman appreciates too well values and real 
merit to countenance sham even for a moment. 
Of course, under the republic, France has in 
this respect degenerated, and the conferring of 
the Legion of Honor has no longer the value 
it used to have in the beauteous land of St. 
Genevieve. * * * 

Next to England, Prussia in Germany has the 
most snobbery in the world. The Rhinelanders 
and the Bavarians are devoid of it. They are 
too — what the Germans call "gemuethlich" — 
amiable to be snobbish, but the Prussian — 
whew ! "stolz," "kalt" — overbearing. It is said 
that an Englishman dearly loves a lord — yes, 
and a German dearly loves a title. 

116 



AS TO FADS 



7S WORD with my readers about "fads." As- 
** suredly there is an abundance of them in 
this our day. I suppose they always existed, but 
the craze for novelty ever grows stronger and 
normal life and living, normal points of view, 
normal thought, normal atmosphere, seem to 
be yielding more and more to the erratic and 
abnormal, thus creating an unhealthy condi- 
tion of life. * * * 

Could we, however, go back to the days of 
the Caesars we would find that under Roman 
skies civilization had its fads, and leaders of 
fads. The world has had and always will have 
characters neither well poised nor normal, no 
matter under what star they may happen to be 
born. The hobble skirt and the merry widow 
headgear were no doubt unknown to Fulvia and 
Agrippina, but these Roman matrons, too, had 
their fashion fads. ^ ^ # 

We sometimes blame women for being more 
given to fads than men, but it is largely a mat- 
ter of temperament. Then, too, while the char- 
acter of woman has changed less through the 
centuries than that of man, the adventitious in 

117 



her nature has undergone greater changes. Ii 
you study the "modes" of the last five centuries 
you will see that, save in knee-breeches, buck- 
led shoes and the time-honored ruffles — of 
course not forgetting wigs — man's attire has 
been largely constant. 

But the case is not so with woman. Every 
half century — nay, quarter century — has com- 
pletely transformed her, as set forth in the fash- 
ion plates. Yet a good reason can be given 
for this. The artistic in woman is pronounced, 
while in man it is only accidental. A few men 
study good taste in dress, while woman ever 
reads its volume from cover to cover. Of 
course there are exceptions, but generally 
speaking a woman short in stature and great in 
longitude knows better than to gown in an equa- 
torial check so loud that it may be heard and 
seen across the street. 

* * * 

Perhaps woman is more erratic in her fads in 
art than in anything else. She will study Jap- 
anese art, whose inspiring conception is as full 
of splendor as sunbeams and no more coherent, 
while she knows absolutely nothing of Christian 
art as developed through the Byzantine, the 
Renaissance or modern school. I once saw an 
audience of women entertained by a Japanese 
lecturer, his subject being Japanese Art, and 

118 



whose little barking voice could not be heard 
beyond the third row of seats, and I would be 
willing to wager a Klondike mine that not a 
woman present at the lecture could give the 
names of five great Italian painters. They were 
simply chasing a fad. 

* * * 

It may be accepted as a certainty that every- 
thing that departs from the normal — in life, lit- 
erature or art — is an injury to character develop- 
ment. So all women of our day who forget the 
purposes of true womanhood really retard the 
progress of our race. The same applies to men. 
Your effeminate man puts back the dial hands 
of civilization and progress. 

* * * 

If we could only put these faddists in straight 
jackets as motley-colored as their views, and 
keep them confined in a corner of God's earth 
where they would not "stain the white radiance 
of eternity," giving them rainbow toys to play 
with and cheap mirrors to reflect their own 
vanity, why, then, civilization would not suffer. 
The dreams of poets would soon be realized, 
for the true ideals of the soul, not warped by 
faddists, would find expression in our lives and 
would thereby link the truth and beauty of this 
earth to the splendor of heaven. 



119 



SOME CUSTOMS 



1M O one who has traveled to any extent in the 
A ^ various countries of Europe but must 
have noticed what marked difference exists in 
the customs of the different peoples. These cus- 
toms have grown out of the life of the people 
and are really a very part of it. For instance, the 
Carnival celebration preceding Ash Wednesday 
is now so fixed in the life of the people of Ger- 
many and France and Austria that no order of 
either Church or State would avail in its repeal 
or abandonment. + ^ + 

Sometimes this Carnival celebration leads to 
much abuse, as in Germany at Cologne and 
Munich. Too much license is permitted and 
revelry gets the better of sound sense and 
morality. There is still something of the untam- 
able in every one and, if all restraint is thrown 
off even for three Carnival days, human nature 
— poor human nature — suffers. Nothing shows 
more the poise of character than the wisdom 
that guides youth across these Carnival days. 

* * * 

Europe is a very old continent and it has all 
the characteristics of old age. It is courteous, 

1 20 



serious, thoughtful, "full of wise saws and mod- 
ern instances," as Shakespeare would say. It 
likes repose — sumptuous living, court splendors, 
royal etiquette, full dress and courtly epithet. 
But it has, too, something of decreptitude in 
its step, a hollowness and squeak in its voice, 
wrinkles in its laughter and semblance in its 
tears. * * * 

You will not find in Europe the rich optimism 
of America. It has lost long ago the sweet 
visions of youth. But it is full of wisdom — "the 
wisdom of a thousand years is in its eyes." Yet 
we love America better because of its mistakes. 
They are the mistakes of youth. They are mis- 
takes of the head, not of the heart. America is 
a full-grown boy — rich in the promise of man- 
hood, clear in spiritual vision, large in the char- 
ity of the soul. * * * 

European politeness is called by some "four- 
flushing" or "bluffing." It is true it is often 
not real. But what of that? Is all our friend- 
ship in America real? How much of it around 
us has not a business ring to it? Could we but 
understand fully the motive behind some of it, 
we would perhaps cease designating European 
politeness "four-flushing." The truth is sincerity 
belongs to the individual and not to a race or 
country or continent. 

121 



To a traveler touring Europe one of the most 
striking things is how universally obtains the 
habit of smoking. Europe seems to be but one 
great pipe from Amsterdam to Naples. There 
is scarcely an exception to this. Belgium and 
Holland are clouded with smoke — perhaps this 
is why their painters excel in cloud effects. 
Smoking is to the Belgian what snuffing is to 
the Frenchman. * * * 

While traveling in a compartment in Europe 
— though some of these compartments, as in 
America, are specially set aside for smoking — 
it is a common thing for a gentleman in a com- 
partment occupied by ladies to pull out a cigar 
and, striking a match, bow with all the address 
of a true courtier, and, while the match is on its 
way to meet the end of the cigar, ask of the 
ladies "permission" for his indulgence. 

* * * 

To a man from the New World here across 
the Atlantic this request on the part of the 
smoker, after he has already almost begun 
action, seems indeed humorous. But I sup- 
pose it is all right in Europe. The humorous 
and ridiculous point of view in Europe and 
America is quite different, and as long as the 
ladies of Europe consider it all right we have 
no right to complain. It is Old World form 
and courtesy and I suppose quite correct. 

122 



SOME MORE CUSTOMS 



H 



OW much we are slaves to customs is 
realized by any one who has traveled 
and observed. What is regarded as good form 
and good manners, for instance, among the 
Latin races is often a violation of good form 
and good manners among English and Teu- 
tonic races. Even our own country, here in the 
New World, is sharply differentiated from 
Europe in many of its social customs. Nothing 
is more amusing here in America than the ab- 
horrence with which many American women 
view the habit of smoking among men, as if it 
were a deadly and unpardonable sin, forgiven 
neither in this world nor in the world to come. 
* * * 

Not long ago, for instance, I heard two 
Chicago young ladies criticise severely a young 
man because he used tobacco, declaring that 
it was a habit unbecoming a well bred man, 
and, while thus pronouncing judgment on the 
young man, they twisted and wallowed in their 
mouth a supply of Zeno's gum that would make 

123 



any corner of Europe prick up its ears and 
look aghast. And yet they thought they were 
models of good breeding and good form. 

* * * 

In this respect a story is told of a Chicago 
girl — South Side one — who died, and, when St. 
Peter unbarred the portal and let her into the 
pearly street, she at once looked around for 
Zeno's gum-slot and, not finding it, was heard 
to exclaim : "Well, Paradise is a pretty dull 
place without Zeno's gum-slot ! I guess I'll 
hie back to Chicago, where I can see the Cubs 
and White Sox play, and chew gum in the pri- 
vate box of any theater. These Seraphim are 

behind the times." 

* * * 

Of course, ardent gum-chewers hold that the 
habit prevailed in ancient days — that gum- 
chewing was a common thing in old Roman 
homes in the time of Cicero and Caesar, and 
that in the days of Fulvia and Agrippina gum- 
chewing was a great prevention of gossiping, 
the women being so busy kneading the gum 
under their tongue that they had no time to 
devote to their neighbors' hobble skirts. In- 
deed, we have some proof of this in the play of 
Julius Caesar, where Cassius says to Brutus, 
"Brutus, chew upon this." 

124 



Speaking of smoking reminds me that in 
several countries the men smoke around the 
table, in the presence of the ladies, at the end 
of the meal. I have seen this done in Mexico, 
and the women did not seem at all shocked. 
I can also never understand why here in Amer- 
ica in a public elevator, when a woman enters, 
the men should uncover their heads — and this, 
too, at a risk of getting a bad cold. Men walk 
around the office of a hotel frequently with 
their hats on; why should they take them off 
in a public elevator? Simply because it is the 
custom. * * * 

The first time I attended a ball or dancing 
party in Germany I was very much struck with 
certain German customs that prevailed. For in- 
stance, when a young man enters the room, hav- 
ing divested himself of his coat, hat and gloves, 
he goes around the room and introduces him- 
self, announcing himself with a bow nearly akin 
to an Oriental salaam. At first it seemed 
laughable, but after all it is merely custom and 
is quite as sensible as our method of intro- 
ducing a new arrival. 

* * * 

The habit of minding one's own business 
prevails a good deal more in Europe than in 
America. This, I think, arises from the spirit 

125 



of monarchial government. In a democracy, 
where everybody is as good as everybody else, 
and better, the sense of propriety is often for- 
gotten. We think so much of ourselves and 
so little of the importance and standing of 
others that we often assume that mere citizen- 
ship gives us the right to interfere in and crit- 
icise matters entirely outside of the orbit of 
our duty or social surrounding. Of course this 
criticism, too, has its value, but it sometimes 
leads to unpleasantness, to say the least. 



126 



THE STAGE AND THE 
READING DESK 



SOME MEMORIES OF GREAT 
ACTORS 



I DESIRE to chat to-day with my readers on 
* the subject of the stage and some of the ac- 
tors I have seen during the past thirty years. 
Shakespeare, it will be remembered, has said 
that all the world is a stage, and some bright 
woman has added recently, "Yes, but the stage 
is not all the world/' # # # 

I must make confession to my readers that to 
me, since my very boyhood, the theater has 
been a passion, for I have always loved to see 
life unfold itself before me in its complex form. 
I have loved to see plot developing and char- 
acter advancing and the fatalism of passion 
sweeping actor and actress along to defeat and 
destruction, such as you see in the great trag- 
edies of Shakespeare. 



The great tragedies of Shakespeare! What 
do they not recall ! To me they conjure up the 
great names that have added lustre to the stage 
during the past three decades of years. My first 
introduction to Shakespeare was through the 

129 



tragedy of "Othello," one of the most perfectly 
constructed, as to its technique, of all Shake- 
speare's dramas. I was a boy at the time, of 
some fifteen or sixteen years of age, in attend- 
ance at St. Michael's College, Toronto. Our 
academic school year was ended. We had 
played under the able direction of Father Fer- 
guson in the open court of the college yard, 
studded with its whispering pines, Cardinal 
Wiseman's "Hidden Gem," a drama of the early 
Christian centuries, and all prizes and accessits 
had been awarded. We were at last free ; 
though, to be just to the good Basilian Fathers 
who had and have now charge of St. Michael's 
College, the spirit of discipline was extremely 
kind but firm. No more tender-hearted and 
kindly man ever watched over the welfare of a 
college of boys than was Father Vincent, the 
then superior. Blessed be his beautiful 
memory! * * * 

I remember, as if it were but yesterday, that 
T. C. King, an English actor of eminence, who 
had fallen somewhat from dramatic grace 
through a personal weakness, was occupying 
the boards just then in the only theater there 
was in Toronto, situated on King Street. The 
play for the evening was "Othello," and several 
of the college boys, the writer included, resolved 
to take it in. This meant that we could not get 

130 



back to our college dormitory that night till 
nearly midnight. But what of that! Was not 
the academic year closed, and a plenary indul- 
gence was always the order for that evening. 
Still, we were apprehensive that the unhallowed 
hour of our arrival at the college "when church- 
yards yawn" would be detected. We got in, 
however, and I have forgotten just now how, 
but two iron-clad stairways were hard to climb 
without arousing from slumber the professors 
in the rooms hard by. We immediately unshod, 
not exactly because, like Moses in the burning 
bush, the place where we stood was holy 
ground, but because our boots on the stairway 
made an "infernal noise." We crept stealthily 
to our couches. It was all over. 
* * * 

Speaking of Shakespeare's tragedies, I have 
seen but four really great actors interpret them. 
Now, of course, this excludes many other tal- 
ented actors whom I cannot classify under the 
title "great." The names of the four great 
actors are: Edwin Booth, Barry Sullivan, Sal- 
vini and Sir Henry Irving. Each of these four 
had one great role in which he surpassed all 
other actors. It is doubtful if Hamlet ever had 
a truer interpreter than Booth. The same may 
be said of Sullivan in Richard III, of Salvini in 
Othello, and Irving in Shylock. All four were 

131 



superb — matchless in these individual roles. 
The finest voice I ever heard on the stage was 
that of Booth. I hear him yet in reply to Polo- 
nius' question: "What do you read, my lord?" 
run the vocal scale with the reply, "Words, 
words, words." * * * 

From the moment Barry Sullivan stepped 
upon the stage uttering the soliloquy : 

"Now is the winter of our discontent 
Made glorious summer by this son of York," 

you thought of nothing but this crafty, plotting, 
kingly villain, Richard III. At the close of the 
play the fencing bout on Bosworth field with 
the Earl of Richmond was so fine a duel, so full 
of the issue of fate, that it alone was worth the 
theater admission. I do not think that Sullivan 
had any other great play, at least I have never 
heard of one. I should think he would have 
made a great Iago, though, of course, Richard 
III and Iago are distinctly two different types 
of villains. If we compare Richard and Iago, 
the latter has the more of mind, but is the baser 
villain. Richard destroys others to raise him- 
self, and destroys them with a speedy death, 
while on the other hand Iago destroys others, 
as if, in their destruction alone, he had a suffi- 
cient end — he destroys deliberately and care- 
fully and in every way with malice aforethought. 

132 



SOME ACTRESSES 



*i*HE presence in our city last week of the 
* great English actress, Ellen Terry, recalls 
to my mind some of the charming women whom 
I have heard interpret Shakespeare during the 
past thirty years. Now, after many years, 
their portraits hang on memory's walls, as if 
it were but yesterday that they stood before 
the footlights. * * * 

I have seen so many Ophelias, Lady Mac- 
beths, Portias and Juliets that in some cases 
their characteristics are somewhat confused. 
One thing is quite certain and clear in my mind, 
however, and that is that Adelaide Neilson was 
the greatest Rosalind of the last half century. 
Mary Anderson made a very acceptable Rosa- 
lind, but to me this beautiful Kentuckian was 
at her best in such a character as Parthenia in 
"Ingomar." As to the character of Juliet, she 
was too large for the Verona heroine, who was 
fourteen at Lammastide. 



Then, I doubt again if there was enough of 
the poetry of love in Mary Anderson to repre- 
sent fully the character of the daughter of the 

133 



Capulets. She had far more of that fine poise 
found in Portia and hardly enough of the ban- 
tering abandon for a Rosalind. She made a bet- 
ter Ophelia of the deep and silent heart. I am 
not indeed surprised that Mary Anderson quit 
the stage for the quiet retirement of home. She 
always impressed one as possessing the very 
virtues that would dower the fireside and a 
good man's heart with the most perfect gifts 
of a woman. * * * 

It was not, by the way, in tender and emo- 
tional parts that Mary Anderson was greatest, 
but rather in heroic and sublime parts, for her 
soul, while it vibrated also with emotion, meas- 
ured up to its full height only in passages where 
the strength of true womanhood was enlisted. 
In her retirement from the stage Mary Ander- 
son added to the home her best and rarest gifts 
— a soul ennobled with the precious virtues of a 
true woman. * * * 

In the springtide and early summer of her 
stage work Julia Marlowe made an admirable 
Juliet, albeit she has some striking mannerisms, 
especially in the balcony scene. But Julia Mar- 
lowe can flood the stage with love, so that 
even grey beards sigh and think for the 
moment that they are young again. She cre- 
ates for you the atmosphere and the back- 
ground — you are in Verona under Italian 

134 



skies and scale the garden wall with Romeo 
as he utters the words, "He jests at scars who 
never felt a wound." ^ + * 

As for the Lady Macbeths, why, there are 
so many conceptions of the character that it is 
difficult to say who has been the greatest Lady 
Macbeth of the past thirty years. Charlotte 
Cushman made one of the strongest Lady Mac- 
beths ever seen on the American stage. 
* * * 

The Hungarian actress Janauschek gave also 
a very fine presentation of this character, 
though hardly our accepted Lady Macbeth. 
Mrs. Bowers represented the physically frail 
Lady Macbeth with tremendous mental force, 
energy and will-power, while Janauschek gave 
you the idea that Lady Macbeth was physically 
strong and impressive. 

^ He ^ 

Of course, no one can well ever forget the 
Portia of Ellen Terry. Portia is my favorite 
among the women of Shakespeare, though I 
notice that Ellen Terry has declared in favor of 
Imogen. But I think Portia is the finest model 
for every girl who would wish to keep good bal- 
ance between head and heart, and, in my opin- 
ion, it is this beautiful adjustment of head and 
heart that after all makes for the true and high- 
est type of womanhood. 

135 



BEHIND THE READING DESK 



*1*0-DAY I wish to discuss some of the merits 
* of the great public readers or, if you will, 
elocutionists, whom it has been my privilege to 
hear during the past thirty years. This is a 
form of intellectual entertainment which ob- 
tains very little in Europe. It has been and 
indeed is yet very popular in America. In the 
past great readers, such as were Bellew, Mrs. 
Siddons, Professor Churchill and Vandenhoff, 
were always sure of large and appreciative audi- 
ences. Such appreciation certainly registers in- 
tellectual taste. I fear, however, that the taste 
for high-class music as a form of entertainment 
has not yet become fixed in our land, and, while 
we willingly go to parks and halls to hear great 
orchestras, we are drawn there not so much by 
the music as by the desire of relaxation and the 
noveltv of an assembled crowd. 



The first great reader whom it was my priv- 
ilege to hear was Mrs. Siddons. Those who 
have heard her will remember that she was a 
queenly woman, of that fine and delicate mould 



136 



which is the delight of painters. She had what 
might be designated a Mrs. Siddons voice of 
very fine timbre, musical to an extraordinary 
degree and capable of the most delicate shading. 
Her transitions from humor to pathos clearly 
evidenced how fully her soul was her own and 
what ready command she had over her every 
feeling. She could be very dramatic, though I 
do not think that the dramatic was the highest 
quality in her reading. Her sleep-walking 
scene from "Macbeth" was good, as were also 
Tennyson's "Revenge," but I much preferred 
her in her selection from "Helen's Babies" and 
"Father Phil's Collection." Hers was, indeed, a 
charming personality, and it may be said of her 
that she queen'd it behind the reading-desk. 
There have been greater readers than Mrs. 
Siddons, but few who added to rare gifts such 
beauty and attractiveness of womanhood. 

* * * 

Many years ago there passed before New 
World vision with the brilliancy of a meteor a 
reader of exceptional refinement and artistic 
finish — a Mr. Belford, born in Dublin, Ireland, 
and largely educated at the English universities. 
Where he received his elocutionary training I 
know not, but he had a great repertory of read- 
ings that touched and included well-nigh every- 
thing in the whole range of English literature. 

137 



He was an excellent interpreter of Dickens, and 
could not be surpassed in such a reading as 
"Boots at Holly Tree Inn." He possessed some 
of the same subtle vocal witchery as Mrs. Sid- 
dons, added to the fact that his was a more 
comprehensive repertory. 



Those who have heard the late Professor 
Riddle of Harvard University recognize full 
well where his strength lay. Professor Riddle 
was known as an admirable interpreter of the 
comedies of Shakespeare. In such light pastoral 
plays as a "Midsummer Night's Dream" and 
"As You Like It," Professor Riddle had a won- 
derful power of creating with his voice the very 
atmosphere of the play and presenting most viv- 
idly to your eye each character clearly defined. 
I have never heard Southey's "How the Waters 
Come Down at Lodore" read better than by 
Professor Riddle. # ^ + 

A great reader, as modest as he is gifted, is 
Professor Cumnock of Northwestern Univer- 
sity, Evanston, 111. His versatility is wonderful. 
I have heard him in Shakespeare, Dickens, 
Thackeray, Browning, Tennyson, Longfellow, 
Burns, the Irish poets of the lighter vein, such 
as Allingham and Lover, Scotch ballad writers, 
such as Aytoun, and I regard him as very strong 

138 



in all. Professor Cumnock has the veritable 
soul endowment of a great reader, and can cre- 
ate at will in the hearts of his audience sym- 
pathy with the tenderest feelings, the most sub- 
lime exaltation, the purest ecstatic joy or deep- 
est sorrow of the soul. 



He is very strong in Scotch readings and his 
Irish characterization is also very good. I 
have heard more finished readers than Profes- 
sor Cumnock, but I have never yet met a vocal 
interpreter of literature who can, so to speak, 
reach the heart or mystery in a reading as well 
as he. Professor Cumnock is not a faddist. He 
clings to the great masters in prose and verse, 
and is satisfied to lay bare the soul of great mas- 
terpieces which have held and will hold their 
place for all time. Professor Cumnock is also 
not only a great reader, but a great teacher as 
well, and much of his success lies in the fact 
that he always in all his work inspires and exalts. 



139 



NATURE 



CONCERNING MOUNTAINS 



LET me chat to-day with my readers about 
God's great altars — the mountains of the 
world — before which bows the heart of nature 
full of the homage born of reverence and truth. 
I have seen something of the Swiss Alps, the 
French Alps, the Bavarian Alps, but in sublim- 
ity and grandeur they do not measure up to the 
Canadian Rockies. * * * 

I shall never forget a summer I once spent 
in the Canadian Rockies at Banff, where is 
established the Canadian National Park. This 
is one of the most delightful spots in the world. 
Here, as in Shakespeare's Forest of Arden, you 
get close to nature and live a truly idyllic life. 
Around you rise in majesty and awe the snow- 
capped mountains, some to the height of twelve 
thousand feet. * * * 

Unless you have lived among mountains for 
some time, you will be greatly deceived in the 
matter of distance. It is like being in a country 
where the air is very light and rare, as, for in- 
stance, in Colorado. I have seen tourists come 

143 



to Banff and feel equal to reaching the summit 
of everything in sight. After a few days, how- 
ever, they lost their ambition somewhat. 



I remember distinctly a party of three having 
reached Banff one evening, and registered at 
Wright's Hotel at the source of the Sulphur 
Springs, a very good hostelry, where our party 
was staying, and after a few enquiries they arose 
next morning at daybreak and, having partaken 
of a hasty breakfast, started out mountain- 
climbing. * * * 

They evidently had no idea of the height of 
a mountain or the distance from its base. The 
three mountain-climbers returned in the eve- 
ning hatless, shoeless and I was going to say 
almost breathless. They had lost their bearings 
— a very common thing in climbing a moun- 
tain — and had wandered at random for hours, 
rending their garments and pausing to discover 
if they had reached any definite point in the 
topography of the mountain. 

* * * 

Mountains are the sublimest creations that 
ever came from the hand of God. No man can 
stand at their base and doubt the existence of 
God. If he does faith will smite his brow and 
his heart will immediately utter "Credo!" "I 

144 



believe !" And then the feeling that the majesty 
of God is about you, as eventide sinks down 
upon each hoary summit, and dwells with you 
in the valley! * * * 

I had a good taste of mountain climbing once 
while I was a student at Grenoble University, 
at the foot of the Alps in France, in the prov- 
ince of Dauphiny. We started out one morning, 
a party of eighty students, men and women, to 
climb one of the peaks of the Alps, and our task 
continued till noonday. When, however, we 
reached the summit, the view before us repaid 
well our struggle and toil. 
* * * 

In the distance could be seen Mount Blanc, 
of which Coleridge, the English poet, writes, 
and yet Mount Blanc must have been at least 
eighty or one hundred miles from us. We all 
took our luncheons with us and at noontide re- 
freshed and revived ourselves, when we reached 
the summit of the mountain. Of course wine 
was the order of the day for drinking. I remem- 
ber this very well, for owing to a misstep I lost 
my bottle, which went rolling down the moun- 
tain side, causing huge merriment to the party. 
I believe, however, it was an inferior brand of 
wine and even now this consoles me. 



145 



AS SEEN THROUGH MEMORY 



[ SIT this evening wrapt in the memory of 
* years agone. The fields, the orchard and 
the winding lane stretch on and on, and the pic- 
ture conjures up a boyhood spent where the fra- 
grance of the wild flowers filled the air with an 
aroma found only where the heart of nature 
nestles behind the woods and the hills. 



It is a poet's hour. Lazily the cattle lin- 
ger in the marsh meadow-lands. Twilight has 
wrapped its mantle around the cold shoulders 
of day and the voice of the plowman is heard on 
the hillside, urging on his wearied steeds as they 
reluctantly traverse the furrow and hope for an 
early releasement at the gate. 

* >k * 

How small, indeed, is the city when compared 
with the great temple of the country ! It is the 
English poet Cowper who says "Man made the 
city, but God made the country." And so in- 
deed it is. These great aisles of God that 
stretch across the verdant fields, canopied with 
the splendor of the sky and full of its radiant 

146 



mystery, are they not the playground of man — 
the recreation hall of the human heart, where 
light and love clasp hands and woo the en- 
chanted hours? ^ ^ ^ 

Yet all this splendor of the fields is but noth- 
ing when compared to the splendor of the soul, 
as it broods on the things of God and transfig- 
ures as with a finger of magic the plain illusions 
of the senses into the deep and pregnant things 
of the soul. The water at Cana is changed into 
red, red wine. ^ „. * 

But it is through the prism of memory that 
glint and glow the ripened rays that stream 
from those far-off days, when childhood felt 
the warm clasp of maternal love and the sacred 
hour of benediction was ushered in in prayer 
and Peace. As we travel inland the shore and 
its white sails are soon lost to view. 



Now what shall we carry away from these 
treasures of memory epics of our morns? 
Standing upon the white threshold of this 
goodly temple of our youth, we see rise around 
us the early dreams and ambitions of our soul. 
Since then they have been translated into fact. 
On the one side stands our guardian angel, on 
the other our mother. They are both filled with 
anxious care, for their concern is our eternal 
peace and welfare. 

147 



CONTENTS 



Dedication 3 

Foreword 5 

Education 7 

Certain Educational Deficiencies 9 

Catholic and Secular Colleges Contrasted 13 

Some European Universities 17 

Voyaging to Europe and Tipping 21 

Voyaging to Europe 23 

On Tipping 26 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 3 1 

The Poet Longfellow 33 

Languages, Magazines and Criticism 39 

The English Language 4 1 

A Word About Languages 46 

Concerning Composition 5 2 

As to Magazines 57 

Critics and Criticism 60 

Art 6 5 

Something About Art 67 

Art and its Times 7 1 

149 



Woman : Her Education and Marriage . . 75 

Concerning Woman jj 

Some Marriage Customs 81 

Government 85 

Forms of Government 87 

Literature 91 

Lyric Poetry 93 

The True Poet 96 

The Technique of Poetry 99 

Some Irish Authors 103 

A Word About Translations 106 

Snobs, Fads and Customs in 

As to Snobs and Snobbery 113 

As to Fads 117 

Some Customs 120 

Some More Customs 123 

The Stage and the Reading Desk 127 

Some Memories of Great Actors 129 

Some Actresses 133 

Behind the Reading Desk 136 

Nature 141 

Concerning Mountains 143 

As Seen Through Memory 146 



150 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2009 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 
(724)779-2111 



f 



mimuii 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 526 285 9 • 



